Can You Use A Camera As An Alarm System In A Domestic Or Small Business Application?
Can You Use A Camera As An Alarm System – Whether or not you can use a CCTV camera as an alarm system in a typical residential or small business application is an interesting question.
Just off the cuff we’d say you can, but it depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to provide a home or business owner with internal and external camera analytics delivering intrusion detection line crossing with event image push notifications to a smart device, then yes.
Will systems like this – a group of typical cloud-based CCTV cameras set up to alert a user to intrusion events – offer professional levels of intrusion detection? We’d say not. There’s a point where the homeowner is going to be too far away, asleep, or a genuine intrusion event is going to be beyond their ability to handle.
If you want to use CCTV cameras as an alarm system to report alarm events and provide video verification to a monitoring centre, then there are professional options – you need to find monitoring stations that support these services.
Exactly how you’d manage things is flexible in that there are edge cameras from capable manufacturers like TP-Link running on 4G, Wi-Fi cameras using local infrastructure, and clever NVRs aggregating local cameras offering versions of AI-powered intrusion detection.
When we started thinking about this question, we wrestled with which core system we preferred – an alarm system using traditional sensing technology with integrated cameras, or a group of cameras running intrusion analytics. Both have advantages and there’s more to the question than first appears.
Can You Use A Camera As An Alarm System?
Wireless sensors, including those with integrated cameras, use much less power than PoE or Wi-Fi cameras, making them more flexible in terms of application. They’re also easier to install, which is never a bad thing. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi cameras offer better quality image streams.
There are also alarm panels and cloud alarm services that incorporate cameras. Systems like Risco, Qolsys, Ajax incorporate cameras – the Hikvision alarm panel allows you to add a camera as a zone, which is a piece of functionality well worth exploring, we think.
A pertinent question is whether we would install an alarm system with no sensor cameras in it at all. The answer to that question is no. Getting images of an alarm event is brilliant and during an alarm event we’d prefer every single sensor delivered images, rather than having to guess what’s happening on the ground by interpreting activations in real time.
The only reason you’d not have camera sensors is with smokies and contact sensors where cameras don’t typically apply and for reasons of cost. But while camera sensors are more expensive, we tend to think the cost is worth paying. We also highly value remote CCTV oversight of key areas.
So, what’s the answer? It’s yes, sort of, and especially if you understand the detection performance a camera offers when compared to an alarm system. Our perfect system incorporates cameas and intrusion sensors.
Exactly how the detection, monitoring and response procedures mesh will warrant careful consideration and in pro-level security applications these operational procedures should take precedence over all other factors, including cost savings.
Can you do it in a home with Ring cameras? Sort of, but not in the way an insurer would rate, nor in a way that’s entirely secure. For smaller professional applications, solutions like the Davantis DaView Mini or Dfusion, which deliver video analytics for perimeter protection using existing cameras, are worth considering.
You can learn more about Davantis gear from the team at Video Alarm Technologies here or read more SEN news here.
“Can You Use A Camera As Alarm System In A Domestic Or Small Business Application?”
