Video surveillance and smart cameras - two security solutions

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Video surveillance and smart cameras - two security solutions

The modern approach to home security offers several solutions:

1. CCTV - simple and affordable with minimal investment in maintenance and your involvement.
2. Smart home security cameras - intelligent with easy control and access from anywhere in the world.

Each has its own features, advantages and disadvantages. To choose the best option for your home security system, it is important to know and navigate these nuances. This article will help you make the right choice between conventional and smart video cameras.

Conventional CCTV - Features and Benefits

Conventional CCTV involves placing video cameras in strategic areas of a guarded facility through cables and transferring the footage to a central recording device. The video material can be viewed on a monitor or a television set, either recorded or online.
Such a closed-circuit video surveillance system has no external connection to the Internet, although modern manufacturers are increasingly endowing new models with intelligent functions. These include sending notifications and camera control via a special smartphone app.

Some of the strongest advantages of CCTV cameras are:

• Reliability and simplicity - in a closed wired CCTV system there is no risk of wireless failure.
• One-off investment - by choosing a camera with smart features such as the ability to support a smartphone app and receive push notifications when motion is detected, you pay for them all at once. There are no additional fees, as with smart cameras (monthly subscription).
• The recording is in continuous mode, which means that you can view all the footage for a specific time period. With smart cameras, only motion, i.e. risky moments, are recorded.
• High resistance to weather conditions - manufactured with special technology for all-weather outdoor use.
• Excellent night-time video recording due to IR sensors. Their range of shooting is much higher than that of smart cameras.
• Data recorded on a local data carrier is safer than in a virtual data field like the Cloud. They are not threatened by cyber-attacks or the risk of data loss in the event of loss of contact with the provider.

The disadvantages of closed-circuit video surveillance include:

• Recording is done on a recorder, so the length of material recorded is limited by its memory capacity.
• If the local media is lost, it will be impossible to recover the data if there is no copy.
• Installing CCTV cameras requires special skills and experience in cabling.
• A video surveillance project is quite time consuming and difficult to reorganise, e.g. changing the installation location of cameras or adding new ones. Requires additional funds for laying cables into an existing room renovation.

Smart home video cameras - features and benefits

Modern smart cameras for the Smart House system have a number of functional features that make them most in demand today:

• Easy installation - they can be installed on any surface, thanks to a special fixing element. Their integrity is not compromised.
• Quick and easy disassembly and expansion of the system - it is easy to move the camera to another location and add more cameras.
• Control and configuration is done remotely via an internet connection and smartphone app from anywhere in the world.
• Recorded video footage is stored in the cloud, on a micro SD or in internal memory. It can easily be viewed on a smartphone or laptop, PC or tablet.
• Cloud storage can be expanded as needed.
• Simultaneous access to the footage for everyone involved (security desk, family members).
• No need for constant monitoring of data storage.
• Easy to integrate into video surveillance systems already in operation, including closed-circuit ones.

The disadvantages are the necessity to have internet connection. Given the prevalence of Internet connection, this deficiency can be classified as very tentative.
Knowing the features of video cameras and smart cameras, you can easily find the best option for your security system project.