How has your experience been having outdoor security cameras?

I am thinking about getting a video doorbell, a floodlight/camera over my driveway, and a camera for the back door/deck.

How has your experience been having outdoor security cameras? Do you actually use them over time? Do you have a pattern of turning them off and on? Do the notifications get annoying? Is it weird for the family to have their comings and goings documented? Any observations you have concerning the day to day usage of the cameras would be appreciated (I do realize that the experience can vary based on what brand/software you have).

We bought 3 Arlo security cameras ~1 year ago. The way our house is oriented there’s no way to see if anyone has pulled into the driveway or is approaching the house. Thus the cameras were more of an “early notification” system for visitors than for real security (the cameras run live and send notifications to our phones in real time).

Despite that I’ve found them to be quite useful. I know when my kid gets home from school, when the mail comes or a package gets delivered, and so on. Today while I was at work my wife did not leave the house at her normal time for a weekly meeting she goes to so I knew just from glacing at the (lack of) camera notifications on my phone that something was wrong. Sure enough she’d had a migrane attack this morning. The cameras have a way of alerting you of movement only within a prescribed area so I can set it to, say, monitor and record the whole driveway but only notify me when someone is actually at the door. Its pretty slick.

They also have a very bright light that comes on whenever movement is sensed in the prescribed area so that in itself may be a crime deterrent. We don’t live in a particularly sketchy neighborhood so I can’t really testify to how well they’ve discouraged anyone from coming onto the property. The three cameras are enough to cover the entire front of the property so theres nonway anyone can come in more than 10 feet or so from the street without getting caught and recorded on camera.

I haven’t played around with saving video files, I’ll do that and report back.

The downsides are 1) they require a monthly subscription ($8) and 2) despite what Arlo claims each battery charge lasts maaaaaybe 3 months, probably closer to two. Charging requires dismounting the cameras (which are held to the mounting bracket with a strong magnet) and bringing them into the house to charge. Not a huge PITA, more of an inconvenience. I wish the battery charge was more robust.

I have a cheap chinese lightbulb camera [not near my tablet so I can’t see what the app is called] It popped up in my facebook feed and was moderately cheap. I just wanted something to monitor the pathway to the door - package drops, wandering cows and goats, visitors of the human sort. It has a slot for a storage card, but right now I just keep it streaming to my tablet.

Hm. The image during daylight is very clear, at night it goes IR and into black and white. For the $30US we spent, we are satisfied. If we wanted to we could buy into the cloud storage and such but for what I use it for, not worth it.

On the plus side, in addition to catching the neighbors livestock grazing my side yard, the first day we put it up a bird [pigeon?] perched on the light fixture and bent down and peeked into the camera. Then during the overnight, a spider spun a home across the front of the camera area, then we saw some moths and a bat and then the spider vanished. Bird or bat got poor little spider =( [well, I happen to like spiders =) ] Seeing assorted bugs and critters is actually sort of fun, I love the looping swoop of a bat after a moth =)

I’ve got a Ring camera for the front door, and a Panasonic Homehawk window camera. They both work very well and I’ve got the settings for people only.

I’ve also got a couple Arlo cameras and a couple of their motion activated flood lights. All wireless which is nice but as Lancia mentions the recharging is kind of a pain. Especially in the middle of winter. They also have problems operating in sub zero temps with messages of “wait till camera warms up”.
The “talk” feature I consider useless since the delay is horrible and it mutes the other person while you speak so it’s a back and forth of “huh? What? Hello?”
The notifications can also be annoying if something like the lawn service is mowing and it triggers the camera every time they pass by. As well as this time of year wasps seem to be very interested in the cameras and like to crawl across the lens. But you can remotely turn the camera off or disable the notifications for a set time.
I don’t pay a monthly fee so Lancia must be paying for some premium features I don’t have.

Most security cameras these days have fairly easy setup, even if it isn’t the advertised “plug and play”. Maintenance can be a bit more complicated. Our Wi-Fi in this area is less than robust and I periodically have to power off/power up one of our cameras to keep it online. Aside from that, spiders periodically are attracted to the glow of IR lights at night and weave webs across the lens, blocking the view and triggering alerts on windy nights. A long-handled broom takes care of the webbing. The cameras are POE (power over ethernet) so no recharging or battery replacement are required.

I don’t pay any subscription fees (our main cameras are from a respected manufacturer not part of the popular Arlo/Ring/Nest/Wyze axis). Motion-triggered images are sent to e-mail. Camera sensitivity is set very low to keep the number of notifications down. It’s nice to have remote view to see if a package has been delivered, the lawn mowers have arrived etc. We also get to see unusual wildlife lurking about.

The simpler the arrangement, the less chance for complications.

We have Wyze, and we don’t pay any fees.

We use the cameras for watching the birds in the back yard. It’s pretty cool.

I’ve had a hard-wired camera on the front door for 27 years. It has saved me many times from having to talk to magazine sellers, door to door peddlers, poll takers, religious zealots.

I use SimpliSafe cameras for both my front and back doors, and they work great, except you have to recharge the batteries every few months. (They have a solar panel charger option, but I haven’t purchased it yet.)

I used to get notified quite frequently, like when a large truck drove by, but I’ve been able to tune it, so it only notifies me when a person walks up to my front door or back door. I check it once in a while when it notifies me, and I know nobody is home. It’s usually a USPS person, FedEx person, or UPS person dropping something off on my porch.

All of the above. Except I’ve had the camera for less than a year. The Wyze camera is fantastic. In the morning I check the playback and see the possums drinking from the basin in the yard. And the raccoons standing on tippy-toe to pull figs from the tree. I have the notification sound (yes, you can change it) set to a faint stringed-instrument chord. Very unobtrusive, but when I hear it in the evening, it usually means my cat is at the front door and wants in. I do have it plugged in inside the house with the cord running out through a window (the cord is very slender) so I don’t have to worry about batteries. I’m 100% pleased with it.

Here’s the yard wildlife:

We have 7 cameras, if you include the Ring doorbell. 4 “passive” which are pointed at fairly large areas (along walls, front of house, etc.). These transmit RF to a base monitor in the kitchen. They don’t use the wifi. There are 2 “active” which acquire targets and swivel to follow anything they see moving. These use wifi and phone apps (or the office computer if preferred). All have wired power (no batteries or POE). They’re all pretty old and and none require an account to use. Lorex and something else (can’t remember). Other than cleaning webs away they’re maintenance free.

Yes, pretty much daily but for convenience stuff (checking the gate before letting dogs out, did a package arrive?)

No. They all run 24/7. The majority of recordings are false positives and the storage gets overwritten. It seems they will have a week or two stored on the rare occasion I hunt through the files.

Yes. I turned off the notifications to my phone, but my wife still has the notification from the Ring doorbell, only when it’s pressed I think. I occasionally reactivate the notification from the “active” camera on the front porch, when expecting an expensive package. Also, I’ve been using the tracking ability less and less, as they both designate on passing cars and it was probably wearing them out (spinning wildly back and forth as cars go up and down the street). The active cameras are the only ones that can see the street and neighbor’s driveways (they’re aimed “out” while the other 4 are aimed “in” – if that makes any sense).

Not really. I did add a switch on the back deck to shut down that camera, since it was “watching” people in the hot tub (recording guests in their swimsuits isn’t something I want). So tubbers can simply press a button on the wall to shut it off. There are also motion lights out there, and sometimes you want to soak in the darkness or evening without glaring floodlights. These are powered by the same switch, so pressing it gives privacy.

I should note that I turn them off when we have a lot of workmen in the yard. Last summer the city had to dig up some of the back yard for buried utilities. In addition to providing them with daily coolers full of iced down drinks, I assured the foreman all cameras had been shut down. This was for obvious reasons since I couldn’t be there all day to let his crew into the downstairs bathroom.

Following the initial installation, I would idly play the last night’s recording while waiting on the phone, etc. (on the office PC). I was really surprised at how much traffic there is on our out of the way suburban street. Far more than I would’ve thought, and frankly, there were curious goings-on at some neighbors. A few had a LOT of cars going in and out of their driveways. Since it’s not affecting me, I didn’t worry too much but I was a little intrigued.

Another observation: The cameras all have near-IR capability and can “see” quite well in the dark. As the crime rate continued its steep climb in our area (neighbors began losing cars and trailers, and eventually an armed home invasion a few streets over), I noticed several unexplained people at night, just outside the clear range of my cameras. These were in the yard, but not yet at the house. My neighbor a few streets away had similar cameras (away from the house, watching inward) and recorded another home invasion attempt. Two men came to the door and one hid in the bushes to the side while the other tried to convince them to open the door, citing some emergency need. He could see both of them and called the police.

At that point I installed over a dozen motion-activated LED floodlights, covering every wall, nook and corner of the house – including the back yard. Anyone venturing a few feet into the yard is hit with retina-singing light. It’s actually uncomfortable, and I wear long-billed caps outside at night since it’s almost blinding. I mention this because I think it actually provides more security than the cameras. All the lurking stopped and we’ve had no intruders for over a year. This really drives away nighttime ne’er-do-wells. Another result is all the animals disappeared. No cats, possums, raccoons, or any of the nocturnal denizens we used to watch. I assume it makes hunting impossible for them (too).

It sounds like there are enough ways to customize and adjust settings so that you can set it up in a way that fits your situation. It seems that anything that gets irritating can be adjusted away. In my particular situation, I have a wife who works away from home, three kids who get home at different times, a dog, and a fairly busy backyard deck. It may take me a while to get things down.

I have seven cameras at the moment: three fixed cameras for the three exterior doors, two PTZ cameras inside, and two PTZ exterior cameras (front and back yards). The two interior cameras are wifi and not attached permanently so I can position them as required. They use USB wall warts. The exterior cameras are all POE and connected to a fairly fast LAN.

There are no subscriptions other than licensing BlueIris on a dedicated video surveillance PC.

Like other people, most of what I capture is simply events like the smaller dog bringing a possum (OK…an opossum) into the house, a tree blowing over in the yard, my bigger dog trudging around in the snow, and so forth. I turn on the alerts (text and e-mail) only when I go out of town for a few days.

I am good friends with a fairly high-up person working for the R**g Universe. I would not have anything of theirs within 100’ of my house due to privacy concerns. Same thing goes for any video camera relying on a third party. BlueIris might be keeping videos of me walking to the bathroom every night, but at least they’re subtle about it.