Screen Approved Visitors and Workers

While the field emphasizes security and I put it in the title of the book, personally controlled cameras on one’s property can offer many more purposes than deterring or recording burglaries (see Deter and Report Crime, later in this chapter).

This includes a lot of distinct activities, all of which have privacy, security, health, and safety considerations:

• Know when packages are delivered to retrieve them or ask a neighbor to, in an area with a lot of porch-prowling package purloiners.

• Allow a remote face check to allow a contractor or other tradesperson into your house—or even someone delivering a package. You may have given or left them a key or have a smart lock you can use to let them in.

• For personal safety, where you live alone and would prefer not opening your door to anyone, would like to come home without worrying is someone is near your home, and want greater awareness of who is around your house even while there is no current crime involved.

• Confirm a child has left the house or arrived home. Smartphones help with this, too, but not all children own one (shocking, I know).

• Monitor a baby or infant in their room.

• Monitor or communicate with a babysitter or nanny.

• Capturing footage of birds and larger wildlife in your area. This may be for appreciation—you can find hummingbird cams all over—or out of concern. In some areas, homeowners have to monitor for animals they view as pests—munchers of vegetables or potential spreaders of disease—like bunnies, deer, rodents, and other small animals. You might also need to be aware of or beware predators like coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, cougars—oh my!

• Capture people letting their dogs poop on your lawn and not picking it up. Seriously, I imagine that’s a top ten, if not top five purpose.

There’s no single camera model that’s perfect for all these purposes. But there are four general considerations that overlap, and you may want to fulfill one or more of these:

• Need to greet someone at the door without being there or opening it: To this end, you almost always want a doorbell cam with a button someone can press. The camera may be paired with facial recognition, which can even be used to unlock the door for known parties if also paired with a smart lock. But it’s always set to activate an alert on your smartphone or another device, allows two-way audio communication, and is optimized (often with a fish-eye lens) to show the entire area around the door. Long-term storage of video is rarely an issue.

• Need to monitor what’s happening inside your house: Aspects of this kind of monitoring can be creepy; others times, it’s necessary or appropriate oversight. If you have employees (like a nanny) or contractors in your house routinely, you may want a camera both to tune in live or to review video if something goes wrong when it’s not criminally wrong. The presence of a camera might deter improper actions, too. A huge array of indoor models meet this need.

  On the storage front, you may want to record continuously and retain that for a period of time, which limits camera choices. Motion-triggered clips may be less useful because of the constant movement in some spaces.

• Need to monitor goings on in front of your house: For contractor work, the coming and going of people to a porch, and even checking up on kids playing in the front lawn, you want either an outdoor battery-powered camera—possibly with a solar panel to avoid having to recharge the battery—mounted in a position that is hard to get at; or, an indoor camera mounted directly onto a window. Motion-triggered short video clips are typically the most useful approach, and all camera systems support them.

• Need to communicate with people inside your house: Most indoor cameras include two-way audio, like an intercom. Check specs on cameras to make sure the feature is present, and read reviews for how well it works. This is often a feature reviewers call out. This sort of communication rarely needs to be stored.

Maintain Distance During Health Crises

The 2020 pandemic has caused countrywide shutdowns, the cancellation of major events and festivals, and highly curtailed travel. But, so far, package delivery continues—and non-delivery people like friends and neighbors may certainly also come to your door.

If you are self-isolating—as I did starting in March 2020—and reducing or eliminating your contact with all other people except (or maybe including) immediate family, a doorbell camera can be a great technological aid. It’s even more of one if you’re in a voluntary or mandatory quarantine. Even if you’re not strictly isolating yourself or being required to, you may simply want to reduce the potential vectors of contagion by reducing contact.

Not having to open your door to someone and risk accidental exposure to each other is a great reason to add a doorbell camera. This can allow you, while inside your home, to greet people and let them know where to leave something. This can also be less awkward or embarrassing than yelling through a window or door if you need to explain you’re in isolation for health reasons!

Here are the best options for three kinds of doorbell installations:

• Replace an existing wired doorbell: The Eufy Video Doorbell ($159.99) is the best solution to remove an old-fashioned direct-wired doorbell and replace it with a camera and two-way audio communicator. Video is stored locally as motion-triggered clips; there’s no cloud option nor subscription cost. If stolen, you lose all the video. If you don’t have old-style wiring, this probably isn’t for you. You might need an electrician if you’re not comfortable with turning off a circuit breaker and rewiring, too.

• Add an externally mounted doorbell camera: You have many choices, but Amazon’s Ring brand has the most options. Consider the simplest, the plain old Ring Video Doorbell ($99.99), which can be surface mounted and battery powered. You can opt to tie it into existing doorbell wiring, too, but don’t have to. Ring cameras can work without a subscription for live interactions and alerts. Monthly storage subscriptions start at $3 per month for cloud-based storage and other features.

• Replace a peephole with a camera: If you have an existing security peephole, you may be able to replace it with a Ring Peephole Camera ($199.99), which is compatible with many styles of optical peepholes. If you’re a renter, your landlord might allow you to install it, too, as it doesn’t add holes or require modifications to the door. It’s also the most appropriate option for most people in live in a building of apartments, condos, or co-ops. See above for storage options.

Of course, a doorbell camera only lets you eliminate or reduce contact, but it doesn’t get rid of what’s left behind. Remember to routinely clean the doorbell button following manufacturer’s recommendations, and wash your hands after handling packages or other deliveries.

Deter and Report Crime

While property crime has plummeted in most of the developed world in the last decade, it’s certainly not down to zero. And you may live—as I do—in a pocket in a city that for whatever geographic, socioeconomic, or topographical reasons has a measurably higher property crime rate than the rest of your area.

That can be because your house or street is tucked out of the way or views are obscured by hills or valleys—or your area is perceived as or actually is more conspicuously wealthy than regions around you, even if you’re not a participant in displays of or possession of affluence!

Whatever the reason, if your primary or one of your reasons for installing a camera is to capture video (and audio), there are five components to consider:

• Deterrent: The presence of a camera may scare off potential thieves or miscreants from engaging in crime in the first place.

• Alerts and alarms: If someone appears outside or inside your home, you want to be alerted to it and be able to see what’s going on so you can take action, like calling the police, or have an automatic action occur, like flood lights turn on and a siren go off.

• Video for criminal charges: If a crime is committed in or near your home, your cameras may have captured it. (See Is Video Admissible in Criminal Cases? below.) You may have varying feelings about that, so also read Are You Part of the Surveillance State?

• Video for civil lawsuits: If someone engages in vandalism, steals from you, or otherwise causes damages, video can be an effective tool in a lawsuit in which you are suing to recover money or obtain other relief.

• Monitoring crime in the area: You may be an area with enough general lawlessness that you use a camera to help as part of neighborhood efforts, such as monitoring for car thefts or break-ins at other houses. You might also want to make this readily available to other neighbors and the police; see Are You Part of the Surveillance State? for more on this, too.

For each of these prospects, the kinds of camera specs you need are fairly straightforward:

• 1080p, 2K, or 4K recording: Modern cameras typically offer 720p or 1080p as an option, and some higher-models can record in 2K or even 4K. The more detail you want, especially of people’s faces and of things farther away, the higher the resolution you want. See Resolution and Quality.

• Night vision: Most camera models feature infrared LEDs to illuminate indoor and outdoor scenes. However, because crimes often occur with low or no lighting, you might opt for a camera that requires a power source instead of a battery to allow for higher-intensity infrared LEDs and a more sensitive image capture sensor. See Night Mode and read the specs on cameras.

• System integration: Most cameras offer smartphone or other alerts when certain triggers set off recording, such as motion or a camera being unplugged. If you’re concerned about a break-in or other actions, you likely want a camera tied into an alarm system that may trigger a siren, call a monitoring company, and even turn on flood lights. See Use Smart Home Ecosystems for Control.

• Full capture: It’s a more niche need, but if you have constant problems with crime, you may want to retain a continuous video feed and for a long period of time. In this case, you typically need to purchase an integrated multi-camera system that includes or supports a network video recorder (NVR). See Local Network Video Recorders and Weigh Centralized and Smart Cameras for more insight.

• Storage: Because you may not discover a crime has occurred until later, you likely want longer-term storage of continuous video or trigger-based clips than a day—sometimes 24 hours’ storage of clips is included free with a camera’s purchase. Instead, look for cameras that offer 7-day to 30-day storage plans or cameras that you can configure with your own storage. See Choose Where Video Lives.

• Third-party access: Some systems let you share video directly with law-enforcement officers or provide it to neighbors who can then choose what to do with it. If this is an ongoing concern, consider that factor in which camera you purchase. Ring offers these features, but they’re controversial. See Are You Part of the Surveillance State? for more on that.