Security & Surveillance

What keeps a camera recording when the power goes:

with a plug-in Wi-Fi camera, nothing. It stops when the socket dies, and even one with a battery loses its link to your phone once the router goes down. Battery and solar cameras ride through a cut on their own power, but they wake on motion instead of filming continuously, and record the outage only if someone fitted a microSD card. Wired systems handle a long outage best, because everything draws power from one box. Analog HD cameras run over coaxial cable to a DVR; IP cameras from Hikvision, Dahua or Ubiquiti take power and data down one network cable from a PoE recorder. Put that box and the router on a UPS and the whole property keeps recording. For a farm, an empty lot or a building site with no fixed line, a 4G camera with a SIM card and a solar panel needs neither a router nor the grid. And to check the far paddock in person, a pair of binoculars does what a fixed camera on the porch cannot.

Coaxial or network cable for a wired camera system:

if a house already has coax from an old system, analog HD cameras reuse it and cost less each; most recent DVRs accept several brands’ analog formats, but check the recorder’s input list first. A new installation is better done with network cable and IP cameras, which give a sharper picture and can tell a person from a swaying branch. Wi-Fi cameras suit a rented apartment where nothing can be drilled, and a video doorbell lets you answer the delivery rider at the gate from your phone. Filming the reef rather than the gate takes a different machine, and those are in photo cameras.

A plug-in camera against a wired kit, new and used:

a Wi-Fi camera for one room runs from about $30 to $80, while a four-camera wired kit with its recorder starts around $200, before the hard drive and the installer’s cable runs. Used, wired cameras fetch little on their own, because pulling cable is the expensive part and the buyer pays for it again. A recorder with a healthy surveillance disk keeps more of its value, and Wi-Fi cameras lose theirs fastest, since a new one costs so little.

Infrared at night and the app account a used camera is still tied to:

ask to see the live picture after dark. Infrared LEDs fail one by one, leaving a dark side or a dim halo, and a dome with mist inside has let water past its seal. Spiders love the warmth of an infrared camera, and a web across the lens means a stream of false motion alerts. On a recorder, open playback and scroll back: weeks of footage prove the disk is recording. Above all, ask about the app: Hik-Connect, Ezviz and similar apps tie each camera or recorder to one account, and until the old owner unbinds it you cannot add it to yours. Get the admin password too: on a branded recorder, a forgotten one is recovered through the maker’s support, not with a button. Outages also do damage when the power returns with a surge, so a recorder that reboots by itself deserves questions.

Taking a system off the wall to sell it with its cables and UPS:

say what kind of system it is, analog over coax, IP or Wi-Fi, then the brand, how many channels are free and the size of the disk. State whether the cameras come down with their cable and power supplies or as bare heads, and add a short clip from each by day and by night. Mention whether it ran on a UPS, because anyone who has sat through a long outage will ask. Leave the unbinding and the factory reset for the handover, so the shop owner collecting a recorder in San Miguelito sees it boot with its disk, play back last night’s footage and leave your account in front of them before any money changes hands.