Keeping it secure (Part 3) with cameras.

I bought an interior camera, for my garage, ages ago. I have a D-Link Omna. Great little camera. Has a good field of vision and, importantly, has two-way audio... which my other half loves as no longer has to shout at me to come in from the garage. Unfortunately, it looks like D-link have discontinued this camera and they have no intention of adding HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV).

I have no interior cameras in the house. I must admit, except the vestibule, or entrance hall, I see little need to have any.

External cameras? That's different. What was a little annoying for me was that I had bought 2 Netatmo Outdoor cameras and they had sat in my house for ages as I tried, unsuccessfully, to get my neighbourhood electrician to install them for me. In the end, I had one of my Hue Pedestal lamps stolen from my drive and so I did the installation of the 2 cameras myself, a nd have since added a 3rd. It wasn't actually that hard at all to do.

All you need is an external power socket, and you can buy all the conduit you need, plus extra wiring, from your local DIY/Hardware store. Here you can see two of my cameras. One at the front of the drive, the other outside my Garage.

The power socket half way down is actually part of my little outdoor movie theatre I've created.... which will be covered in another post.

Setup is also a doddle. Pretty much you add it to HomeKit and it just appears. You may, or may not, want it on the home screen. 

Front of the drive and inside the garage

In terms of tweaking the Netatmo Outdoor cameras, there are various settings inside the Netatmo Security App

You can see I record everything, but I only get notified about people. The reason I record everything is so I can train the camera, just in case it missed anything.

Night time vision is also pretty good. This is a skunk that comes to visit us on occasion.