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Home Video Surveillance Systems: Using PIR Motion Detectors for More Efficient Home Security Surveillance

by Jeffrey Parker

Obviously, the greatest thing when it comes to personal security is literally having someone watching over you. This is why you'll be challenged to find a celebrity or politician without a bodyguard, along with specialists to provide home security surveillance and access control over their gates during sleeping hours.

This, sadly, is the kind of comprehensive service that is out of most peoples reach - and, indeed, is really not necessary for the average person. People call for cash to cover every hour of their time dedicated to your service, whereas machines, once you own them, will do your bidding until they break down. What's more, a fully integrated home security surveillance system, utilizing security cameras and PIR motion detectors, will scare off the vast majority of intruders, while at the same time recording footage to ensure you identify the intruders and prevent them from staging a repeat attempt.

Of course, in order to record high-quality footage for days or weeks at a time, you'd need an extremely powerful computer system capable of storing terabyte upon terabyte of information. Many people do just this, purchasing expensive Hybrid Digital Video Recorders (HDVRs) that record multiple camera feeds at once. Other people subscribe to online storage clusters, to which data is wireless transmitted as it's recorded, ensuring that there's no possibility of intruders tampering with recorded home security surveillance footage. Both these solutions use a system of looped recording that copies over footage a few days or a week after it's recorded, ensuring your data pool doesn't become unreasonably large.

On the other hand, you could just use PIR motion detectors to regulate the active recording done by your home security surveillance cameras. PIR motion detectors require negligible quantities of electricity and need zero storage space insofar as data usage is concerned. Your can rig (or have a professional rig) your PIR motion detectors so as to activate your home security surveillance system, thus eliminating the need for recording when there's nothing going on in front of the cameras. These nifty little devices cover a cone-shaped area in front of them., and are set off by any significant change in the heat of that area. In other words, if a person moves across the visual field of a PIR detector used to detecting the thermographic radiation of couch or a wall, the device will perceive that change as motion, setting the siren sounding and bringing your cameras to life for a specified period after the last detected movement or change in the observed regions.

Your cameras will thus only record when necessary, meaning that maintaining them as an element of home security surveillance will be far more cost-effective. One might further enhance the efficacy of such a home video surveillance system by installing panning, tilting and zooming (PTZ) cameras. Such cameras make use of sophisticated software to track the motion of intruders as they move about the house.

These days, you can buy a PIR motion detector for under $20, and simple webcams and door and window contacts cost even less. Thus it's certainly possible to build an effective home security surveillance system using only the cheapest of materials, even as more sophisticated, state-of-the-art technology offers advantages that aren't easily replicated on shoestring budgets. Obviously, the choice of whether to build your own home video surveillance system or sign up with a security company like ADT and have skilled technicians do the work will come down, first of all, to how much cash you have to play with, and second, whether the prospect of building your own system appeals to you. Remember that an alarm can only do so much when it comes to scaring off criminals - having a security agency capable of backing that warning up with armed force is truly invaluable in any crisis situation.

Want to find out more about Home Security Surveillance, then visit Author Name's site on how to choose the best Video Surveillance Systemfor your needs.

Published December 14th, 2009

Filed in Family