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Where To Start With DIY Home Security?
secretrobotron writes "I'm a recent university graduate from a co-op system which has kept me on the move every other semester, so I've never really had a permanent place to live, and I've never had the opportunity (or the capital) to buy expensive things. Now that I'm working, those restrictions on my life are gone and I'm living in an apartment with things I don't want stolen. I would love to build a DIY home security system, but I don't even know where to start since Google searches reveal things like diysecurityforum.com, which help only to an extent for a curious newcomer. Has anybody out there successfully built a home security system on a budget? If so, where did you start?" Related query: When similar questions have come up before, many readers have recommended Linux-based Zoneminder (last updated more than a year ago); is that still the state of the art?
I went through this about 6 months ago.
I ran Linux zoneminder and Blue Iris - a commercial but inexpensive Windows program each on their own dedicated servers. The servers were single rack space Dual Atoms. I then installed a $100 eBay wireless IP camera, a Linksys wireless IP camera, A usb video capture card with 1 camera, and a regular USB web-cam so I could try each of these out in comparison.
The $100 camera was useless - terrible focus. The linksys, being the most expensive at $250 was the best, but is not an outdoor camera without additional housing. The USB camera is acceptable but requires proximity to the servers. The video camera is also acceptable.
After running the software for 2 months, I eventually settled on Blue Iris. It was $49 and a lot more stable than ZoneMinder. There were some features of zoneminder I liked, but after using both I found several instances were ZoneMinder had flaked out and I could not retrieve data/images that I would need if I was really researching a theft. The errors are very cryptic, often requiring extreme measures to determine what had gone wrong. Usually I just gave up and rebooted everything and it would start working again. The configuration for zoneminder is also very difficult, having to get various versions of video for linux V1 and V2, java applets/jar files etc all tied together. You can go with their 'ready to run CD' to avoid the painful configuration work, but then you are stuck with their Linux distribution, and I wanted to go with the current Ubuntu.
In the end, I have a system I am confident will provide me with images after an incident that will lead to an arrest. I plan on adding/replacing with more of the Linksys style wireless IP cams, at about $250 a pop as budget allows. The entire system will probably get its own dedicated wireless lan eventually. I can also browse in when I am on the road and check in on things, although that is more of a 'peace of mind' thing and doesn't really have much practical use.
Server - $300ish with 1.5T disk space, wireless hub (eBay) $50ish, wireless cams - $250ish each, Windows+Blue Iris - $150ish - reasonably expect up to about 6 cameras. This puts it in the same range as a decent Hard disk based dedicated security recorder from say Radio Shack, but with a wireless ability and lot more flexibility.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
As someone who's been trying to whip up ZoneMinder into a marketable state for over a year now, I have to say it's not all it's made out to be. The capture daemons are brittle and crash frequently due to resource and memory leaks. When they exit abnormally, they always do so with the same code 255, and don't produce workable logs. Timestamps of " 1 january 1970" happen all the time, which mess up the timeline view of events. The web front end is arcane, spartan, and really time-intensive to learn. (E.g. clicking on a monitor's name does something different from clicking on its IP address, even though both screens go to a different subset of camera settings. The difference between a "modect with no zone" and a "monitor" is arbitrary. All the different camera "modes" are strange in my opinion. That there's ten different ways to view events is weird. And so on. It's not unlearnable, but it's far, far from usable.)
So instead of just whining, I patched a lot of these issues, along with adding some new cameras to the database and improving the translation for my native language. I sent the maintainer a pretty nice patch set, if I say so myself. Guess what? Absolute silence, never heard anything back. Which I could live with, if my patches at least showed up in the next release. But no new releases for over a year. So my patience with this project is pretty much over.
Home burglary is almost dead. What's to steal? Any TV that can be easily carried has zilch resale value. Anything with a CRT has negative value; you have to pay the recycling center to take it. Used computers have little value. Nobody keeps much cash around any more. Cell phones are usually in someone's pocket. Who has real silverware today? Used kitchen appliances are nearly worthless. Same for used clothing. Used furniture? No market there.
In the current recession, pawnshops are currently choked with stuff they can't sell, so unloading stolen property is tough.
I just looked at the crime map for my area, which is an urban area of about 100,000 people, ranging from very poor to very rich. About ten burglaries in the last month, and only one was a residence. The rest were break-ins into vehicles. There were more attempted burglaries with arrests than successful ones.