Can any one help me with security? In most respects my condo is nice, but unfortunately in the 6 months I’ve been here, the parkade (the stalls for which each sport a storage unit with a standard door) has been burgled on at least 4 occasions.
The storage door being hollow-core, and the lock being pretty much bathroom quality, I added a protective plate to the door lock; this didn’t help last week, but at least the jerks didn’t smash my car window, like they did 6 others. The condo board recently added more security cameras, but apparently to no avail.
The obvious solution (at least to me), would be to mount a wifi camera right above my storage unit and record to my PC (NAS, actually), but while I’m on the ground floor and my storage unit is on P1, it’s far enough away not to have any 2.4 GHz signal. Also, there’s no electrical outlet nearby.
Perusing ebay, I see there are 1.2 GHz transceiver kits that sell with a camera for ~30-100$. I’ll bet I could set up a battery to get this working, but unfortunately, these all seem to have analog output, which I don’t know what to do with.
Am I going about this all wrong? Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
PS: The parkade has a garage door, so it’s already enclosed.
PPS: Criminal elements have on various occasions stolen garage door openers from cars, so they can probably get in whenever they want.
PPPS: There’s ~300 other cars, so disabling stolen remotes is a great plan, but isn’t working great.
I’m, not clear on the setup - are you close enough to have a security camera that is on your WiFi network? If so (and you don’t mind tinkering) a Raspberry Pi is probably the cheapest and most configurable solution.
How about a motion-detection camera that records to SD card? There are a ton of those on ebay (for dashcam use).
I am not sure what benefit a camera will have. If the intention is to apprehend the criminals after the event, the success rate is not high as they tend to wear hoodie/caps etc to make it hard to identify them.
If the intention is to deter - why not fit a dummy camera.
You should also put pressure on the landlord to upgrade the security.
What does the fire code where you live say about doors adjacent to a parking space? I imagine that they would be required to be fire-rated, and steel doors would be best for that (and for improved security).
I worked at a place that had a camera watching the back door. Thieves put a ladder up behind the camera, put a piece of tape over the lens, hack-sawed the camera off the bracket and stole it along with the tools they got after they broke in the back door.
Either keep them out with a better door and locks or leave the storage unit empty and the door open. A camera is just something more to steal.
I’m kinda down on cameras now, I guess. Today while purchasing door hardware replacements/upgrades, I discovered a product for monitoring garage doors: it sticks to the top panel, and when it rotates on lifting, sends a signal to a base station on which an LED goes from green to red to tell you the door is open and you should shut it. I kinda liked it, except that it detects lifting garage doors and not opening regular doors, and it lights an LED instead of initiating a siren announcing I need to raise a posse.
A way large percentage of people live in apartments and condos nowadays vs. standard housing… surely my need cannot be that niche. Perhaps I need merely to contact a standard alarm company. :dubious:
With no electrical power nearby I don’t see how anything could be practical. Are you really going to change batteries every few days? And if it’s accessible easily enough to do that someone will probably just smash and/or steal the camera itself! I might consider a realistic looking fake security camera in a visible but inaccessible place.
Security cameras are not a slam dunk in terms of stopping theft. My brother had video surveillance footage of a guy stealing a thousand dollar auto diagnostic computer from his commercial garage. He sent a DVD of the footage along with the guy’s name (he recognized him) to the police. They sent it back saying they didn’t even know how to get the disc to play!
Place I worked at had three cameras - good quality stuff too - and alarms. The three thieves climbed an 8 foot fence (from the back of their truck) crossed the yard and used bolt croppers on the padlocks to open a steel shutter. They carried several thousands of pounds worth of goods back across the yard and threw it over the fence. Then found some empty pallets to help them back over and made off.
The police and the boss arrived about ten minutes later. The video showed a clear image of three anonymous youths with hoodies and caps, who obviously knew exactly where the cameras were. No one was ever caught even though the cops had a good idea who they were - they said that there was no evidence to connect them directly.