Recently, homeowners in Australia have expressed their dissatisfaction with traditional house alarms. While many house alarms have a standard feature that allows homeowners to be alerted on a mobile phone when the alarm is tripped, this information is now viewed as too limited to be practical. False alarms are much too numerous, and a simple mobile alert does nothing to screen out false alarms from legitimate emergencies.
In order to solve this problem, more and more house alarms are coming with webcams that store videos and images to an accessible website. These security cameras have become known as cloud cameras because the videos collected are not stored on a local computer. Cloud cameras allow homeowners to jump on the Internet and access their camera footage when the alarm is tripped. This saves time and effort by not having to go back home when the security breach is simply a neighbourhood cat jumping on the windows.
Representatives from Chubb, Australia’s leading home security company, stated that new home security options are being demanded by the majority of existing house alarm customers. Visual verification of possible burglars tops the list of wanted enhancements. Early camera options connected to a home computer or simply to a videotape or DVD recorder. While this setup provide images, they were difficult to access from afar.
Combining security cameras with smartphone technology was the logical next step. With security images and videos saved to the cloud, they can be accessed at a moment’s notice through a mobile Internet connection. Many newer systems will automatically email visual verification to a smartphone or any other email address whenever the house alarm is activated. Some systems allow for continuous remote video streaming, so homeowners can keep an eye on their house at all times from a window on their office computer.
As security cameras become more in-demand, they become richer in features. Cameras were once connected to the security system by wires and simply recorded continuously. The cheaper cameras also had poor resolution and captured only black and white footage. New cameras may be wireless while still being able to stream full-colour high-definition video. New cameras are also equipped with motion detectors. These motion detectors may be used to activate the alarm or simply trigger video recording.
Because many of these new security video technologies are still emerging, many customers are satisfied with a wired camera that streams video to the Internet. Bandwidth for HD video streaming via a wireless connection may still provide hiccups in some recordings.