Take Control of Home Security Cameras

Make your home safer!
Version 1.3, updated January 17, 2022

Are you thinking about installing a home security camera (or several!) or a smart-home security and sensor system that includes cameras? This book guides you through the many decisions about quality, features, privacy, and security that will help you find just what you want. If you own one or more home security cameras already, you’ll learn much more about options, configuration, and changes you can make—and how you might expand your system or replace parts of it. (This book could even convince you that the time isn’t right to purchase a home security camera given tradeoffs you don’t want to make, especially on privacy and security!)

In Take Control of Home Security Cameras, networking and security expert Glenn Fleishman shows you how to make smart choices about buying and configuring cameras that take into account technical details, video quality, system integration, your own privacy and that of others, and internet security.

As you read this book, you’ll:

• Figure out which features are right for you
• Configure your system securely to ensure that you and people you authorize are the only ones with access to live and stored video
• Find out how to build a system entirely offline, in which no video or live streams make their way to the internet at all
• Understand the different kinds of cloud-based storage of video, and which you might be comfortable with
• Learn about Apple HomeKit Secure Video, a new option available for iPhone and iPad users and certain camera systems (including Logitech Circle 2 and Eufy cameras) that provides the highest level of privacy currently available in cloud storage
• Get to know features found in home security cameras, and how they affect the quality and nature of video you capture
• Set your system so that alerts only appear for the kinds of motion, sound, or other triggers that meet your threshold
• Avoid becoming part of the surveillance state—or opt into a limited and controlled part of it with a fuller understanding of what that means
• Learn about the legal aspects and limits of recording audio and video, and how they might (or might not) help catch criminals
• Get in-depth insight into over 10 of the most popular home security video cameras and systems, including Amazon Blink and Ring, Eufy, Google Nest, NETGEAR Arlo, Logitech Circle, Wyze, and several others
• Figure out whether you want a multi-camera system that records video on your network or smart cameras that stream events or continuous video to the internet