Hey! I'm sure this has been asked before, but in kind of a hurried safety situation for a loved one so I have not had time to look through the sub. Essentially, I am looking for an affordable security camera that can be accessed without having to own a smart phone. I have an older family member who does not own a smart phone, but does own a computer, who is in need of some sort of surveillance system on their house after a devastating situation involving her pets. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

Has anyone had any luck with light bulb security cameras? I've looked at Symynelec but can't figure out if I can integrate with Synology NAS? Are these things safe?

If you own a S2 launcher, do you only use S2 ammo from Salt? I've seen some folks at YT using something like small steel balls, but those videos were not using a S2.

I've been using the kinetic ammo, but it seems expensive, so I'm looking for alternatives.

And yes, I'm aware that a heavier ammo = less Joules produced when shooting.

Hello everyone, I am building a new home in a very rural area. I am adding 4 floodlights to my house. I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I need floodlights that are hardwired, have dusk dawn capability but are not on at all during that time unless a motion sensor picks up movement.

A lot of the options I'm finding with the dusk to dawn option have the light very dim at night and brightens if the motion sensor picks something up. Because I live in a "dark sky ordinance" area, that's not possible. They have to have no light on unless they pick up something moving.

I really want the dusk to dawn feature so I don't have to worry about a switch.

Any help would be great. Thanks everyone.

Vivint Alarm System Review

10/25/2024

I have been with Vivint Systems for over 15 years; I could not wait to be free of them soon enough.  Well, the day came when my contract term ended.  Vivint tempted me to renew my contract by lowering my monthly payments, but Vivint was unwilling to abide by my decision not to renew my contract.  Again, Vivint tried to lower my payments by $10.00 and then by $20.00.  I said NO MORE!  Here are some of my complaints: Vivint company is not local and will NOT send anyone else out to fix a problem; instead, Vivint will use your phone for hours to troubleshoot.  If you call, you will rarely get an American, most likely someone from India or Asia with an accent that is difficult to understand.  I had one at home answering calls with kids screaming in the background, and I was trying to understand her.  I had to hang up and call back the next day.  I have spent hours on the phone with them.  I don’t know about you, but my time is valuable.  I now have another local company with no contracts that will come out to service me at my request and provide up-to-date equipment, and I could not be happier.  Incidentally, Vivint had the nerve to bill me one more month after my contract ended, which I paid.  My present alarm company said Vivint equipment is so outdated that they could not use any of it.  Vivint said they did not want their equipment back either.  Buyer BEWARE!

SA

I've rented my home for almost 3 years now, and have this neighbor across the street that's been a nuisance since day 1, though I feel that it's starting to escalate. I'm pretty positive this guy has schizophrenia, or some severe mental disorder, and lives with his mom. He's about 40. Almost every day he's outside roaming the neighborhood screaming profanities and racial slurs at seemingly no one. And he does this weird whistle routine all the time, too. The cops have been to his house DOZENS of times and they've never done a thing. My other neighbor called the cops on him once and once they'd left he destroyed her son's basketball hoop and chucked his basketballs all over the place. Still nothing. My neighbor with 2 little kids actually moved away very suddenly, recently, and I can't help but think it's because of this guy. He belittles the cops every time they're there, but I guess they can't find a reason to detain him? Reason I'm posting this now is because he finally had his go at my mother and I today, calling us all sorts of names and threatening us. We'd minded our own business until now, but I guess he decided we're his new target. He very rarely talks to anyone specifically, so it's unusual to say the least. We're scared to call the cops, because he'd probably know it was us, and don't know what this guys capable of. He's been staring at our house all day from his window. What would you guys do? We're considering trying to talk to his mom and see if she thinks we're in danger, but I'm worried about him disliking that, too. We’d see him smoking/drinking often, as well. We are armed, luckily, though it still makes me uneasy having a guy like this angry at us just for looking at him the wrong way. What if he snaps?

UPDATE: Went to the police station today to file a report, they are very aware of who and what my neighbor does, but couldn’t do anything for me, not even take a note down. Im planning to just ignore him for now and triple check all the locks every night. We’ll see what happens in time…

If one wanted to install a safe in a vehicle, how would they bolt it? In a house, it would be bolted to concrete walls/floors or be installed inside the wall. In a vehicle, there are no such walls. What would be the best place and way to install it so the safe can't easily be removed? Also, is there a way to make a GPS tracker work INSIDE the safe (I've read that they won't work due to the safe being a faraday box, but someone suggested to use the safe itself as an antenna - is that possible?). I can't insure my belongings inside the car in other countries (insurances here do not cover theft at night from vehicles), so I need to find ways to make it harder for thiefes.

I saw my neighbor's car being broken into last night. I called the police but they told me only the owner can report a robbery. So I just recorded them breaking in. After they left, I knocked on the owner's door but he wasn't home. A week later, he gets back from some trip and I tell him what happened. He was furious the cops couldn't start looking for them sooner. Is this normal? Should I have complained to the police station?

Edit: Thanks for the responses! My neighbor will file a complaint with the report. Based on the comments, it won't do anything but it never hurts to get everything on record.

Essentially I called, the cop asked me if I knew the owner or if he was around to call them because I can't. Even with an active robbery, address, and license plate. I'm wondering if they are concerned I can't verify that he called a locksmith but locksmiths don't wear hoods and break windows at 2am idk.

Lots of enlightening comments about needed police reform! Thanks guys! Lobby! Vote! Protect your homes! <3

is it possible to enhance his face ? car stolen

I’m not a fan of surveillance but:

-someone is messing with my mail and I would like to discourage it (I suspect it’s the kids upstairs but I don’t want to make an accusation with no proof)

-I don’t have a peephole at my door and I would like to see who’s there before I open the door

I’m looking at all these doorbell cameras that are in my price range and they all utilize cloud storage. I don’t want to pay some subscription fee just to see a video if someone is messing with my mail

Hey guy so I feel like getting a better shotgun after cheap Turkish 12ga pump action shotgun failed. I'm looking at either Mossberg or Remington. Like Mossberg 590A1 for example. Any American gun owner here can recommend good, reliable shotgun under $800? This is for backup defense plan in case another trespasser is armed and hostile. Thank you in advance

i just noticed this today. is this a forced entry?

I want an affordable outdoor camera system that says “you are being recorded”. I would like ones that record all the time. I need wireless and we don’t have a wired connection. A mix of flood lights, regalar/spotlights and doorbells are ideal. Please note any fees/subscriptions. We currently have Blink and they do not say you are being recorded.

Hello so theres a guy who walks around the neighborhood at the same time always checking and stealing from cars , i have a foid card but i can’t just go outside and shoot him . When the cops are notified they dont really seem to care much and have said they cant find the guy which is dumb because he literally does it at the same time and locations every time . They show up 30 minutes later expecting to still find him in the same spot , what can i do?

I have a basic door lock and for whatever reason it'll unlock at random times. A few months ago this happened a few times and I had the locks changed. It stopped completely after that. Then, this morning it's unlocked again.

I have a ring camera and it shows me locking my door and pulling the handle to make sure. Yet, my s/o will wake up with the door unlocked. I don't have any dogs or kids, nor do any of us sleep walk. My ring camera doesn't show anyone trying unlock/break in either.

Any ideas?

Im looking a doorbell camera and floodlight cam combo for my new house, cant decide on anything. would rather not have a subscription but if it works out more value efficient then i suppose i would consider

I am looking for help or suggestions on how to access my cameras from an App or PC.

My NVR: Flir DNR218 My Cameras: Flir PE133E (Qty: 4)

I have had this system for about 6 years and it has worked fine up till now.

-The Flir App won't open and I can't even find it too download on a new phone

-I have tried the Lorex Cloud App with no success. (on iphone or PC)

Question 1: Does anyone know why this is happening? Is flir / lorex no longer supporting this?

Question 2: If I can't access the cameras I will need to change out the NVR. Will the following 2 NVR's be compatible with my cameras?

Lorex N864A64B or HiKvision DS-7604NI-Q1/4P (I think they will be comaptible because they are ONVIF)

Thanks in advance

Update: Lorex no longer supports Flir and sent me to a company called Dahua. Dahua has an App called DMSS. The DMSS app worked for me. I now have remote access from my phone. Hope this helps someone.

A few weeks ago i caught someone with a flashlight late at night looking through my windows, but as soon as they realized someone was home they ran off. Today someone at around 7:30 PM knocked on my kitchen window loudly 5 times, waited 15 seconds that knocked again loudly 5 times. At first i thought it was my mom since she was outside earlier and maybe she got locked out but when i opened the door and shouted her name, i heard footsteps but no response(I later found out she wasn’t even home). Both times i decided against calling the police since i feel like no burglar would announce themselves like this but since it’s happened twice would it be worth calling the police over(since it could technically count as harassment). Thanks in advance.

I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I’m looking for a safe and a lot of the recommendations I see are either garbage or overkill.

Without too much context, I’m looking to get this safe for the protection of a specific person, meaning that it just needs to be able to withstand a reasonable amount of force.

I have a budget of maximum $500, and I need a safe that will be difficult for the average person to break in to. Meaning they have no power tools, maybe a hammer at most and no lock picking skills. They’re not overly strong. Them being able to lift the safe is not an issue.

I would ideally like the safe to not be electronically based unless it also comes with a way to manually open it, and it cannot have a “back door” if the battery dies.

I’m looking for it to be small to medium sized, ~15”Lx12”Wx12”H.

https://preview.redd.it/33kyznfff7wd1.png?width=1078&format=png&auto=webp&s=b317dfde7d2b2579388449061586f3eb5d75f646

Sorry for the noob question. I'm putting surveillance cameras for a house shaped like the above picture.

I didn't buy a system yet so I'm flexible with the amount of cameras.

Where do you recommend I place the cameras?

Thank you in advance for your help.

I’m primarily a reddit user. When I do research I add “reddit” to the end of my google searches. When I started researching POE cameras Reolink quickly emerged as a Reddit favorite.

When I did some more research online and came across the IPCamtalk.com forum, it became clear they absolutely abhor Reolink, like with a passion. Tons of threads trashing Reolink and grouping them with other consumer cameras from Ring and Nest, etc. 

I read through a bunch of threads and they seem to primarily bash Reolink for promoting high MPs but at the expense of framerate, and not highlighting other tradeoffs in the hardware. Their primary gripe seems to be that Reolink camera footage performs particularly poorly at nighttime if there’s movement.. so you might get a decent still image but if someone is moving about then they’re too blurry to capture. They seem to be much bigger fans of Dahua and Hikvision, from what I gather.

How much truth is there to their claims about Reolink cameras performing poorly at capturing movement and therefore a clear image at nighttime? This is an important use case of course, so I’d love to hear from others here about their experience with the above, and whether anyone has experience trying both Dahua/Hikvision and Reolink.

It seems to me that Reolink has a vibrant community and that they seem to be releasing a lot of new cameras and firmware updates, so appear to be investing and trying to improve. I’d love to get a balanced take from others here.

I'm looking for a home alarm system that allows you to set up modes other than just a fixed "away" and "home", and to configure rules for those modes. I'd like to be able to set up many modes, and choose which sensors are active, and which ones will trigger immediately and which will give a delay. I'd also like to be able to see clear alerts on my phone when a sensor trips, including which sensor it was. I don't really need professional monitoring.

As an example, I'd like to be able to set up a mode for when I'm working from home and my wife is at work. This mode should be like a normal home mode, but the door to the garage gives a delay, and the window sensor for my office should be disabled. Home sleeping would be normal home mode, but my bedroom windows sensors would be disabled. Etc.

Anybody know of any good options? I'm really surprised this is such a rare feature.

Hey everyone, trying to get input. For home defense there is literally no difference between either platform other than user preference likely grip size?

Living in CA. 10-Round in magazine restriction for both of them, so no magazine capacity advantage whichever I get.

I have somewhat experience operating firearms (i've visited range a few times), but I will definitely get safety training or something similar when I actually own and operate. Two firearms I considering to purchase are I've tried before and I felt those are fitting pretty well to me. S&W MP Sport 2 5.56 for rifle, Glock 19 (9mm) for pistol.

I live in single house, but walls between house in my neighbor's house is only around 20-25 feet away, I have some concern that if the rounds are travel over the dry wall and penetrate neighbor's house.

Two story house, it's pretty much open space, no walls for hiding except couple walls in first floor. If I open the master room door, I can see entire second floor, and other rooms' doors.

What would be better option?