For peace of mind, there's really nothing that beats a body guard. You know, someone trained in self-defense and paid to jump in front of a bullet for you. Trust me - you'll have a long search ahead of you if you try to find a high-ranking celeb or politician without one. Many even have teams of people providing home security surveillance , monitoring the entry points to their estates, watching over them while they sleep.

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.

The problem people first encounter with home video surveillance systems is logistical. Just how are you going to store all that footage? If your home security surveillance system includes numerous cameras, you'll find that just a few days of recording can call for terabytes of storage space. Since even expensive HDVRs (Hybrid Digital Video Recorders) are only scaleable up to sizes of about four terabytes, the first part of the answer is that you'll need to use a looped system of recording, whereby you keep between a couple of days and a couple of weeks worth of footage before taping over it. With the increasing speed of internet connections and the growing efficacy of wireless technologies, most people are choosing to sign up with online storage clusters that will sell you storage space according to your requirements. You can access this footage through your own private website. This method is great, as it all but eliminates the possibility of crooks messing with your footage to cover up their crimes.

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.