Where cameras help — and where they don't

First, what a camera is for

A camera does three jobs, in this order of reliability: it deters (a visible camera and good lighting turn away the opportunist), it informs (you know a package arrived, or that someone is at the back door), and it records evidence (a face and a plate, at a size that identifies someone). Most disappointment with cameras comes from expecting the third job from equipment placed for the first. A camera high under the eave sees the whole yard and identifies no one. A camera at head height by the door identifies everyone who approaches it.

Decide, for each camera, which job it is doing. Then place it accordingly.

Placement, in order of value

1. The front door and porch, at roughly head height and angled to catch a face as someone approaches — not looking down at the top of a hat.
2. The driveway and street approach, placed to see a vehicle's plate as it arrives, with the sun considered: a camera facing east or west will be blinded twice a day.
3. The back and side doors and any ground-floor window hidden from the street — these are where most forced entries actually happen, because nobody is watching.
4. The garage and outbuildings, where tools and vehicles are, and where a wireless camera may be your only practical option.
5. Inside, if at all, only in living areas and never where anyone expects privacy. Interior cameras are for confirming an alarm is real, not for watching family.

Resolution and night vision

Resolution is sold in megapixels and matters less than the marketing suggests. What matters is pixels on the face: a 4-megapixel camera aimed well beats an 8-megapixel camera aimed badly every time. Distance and lens width decide this; wide-angle lenses that see “everything” see nothing in detail.

Night vision is where cheap cameras fail. Infrared night vision produces a grainy black-and-white image in which faces are washed out at close range and invisible at distance. The better answer is light: a modest fixture on a motion sensor or a dusk-to-dawn schedule turns almost any camera into a usable one at night and is itself the strongest deterrent you can buy. We test every camera we install after dark, because that is when it needs to work.

Wired or wireless

A wired (Power-over-Ethernet) camera receives power and sends video over a single network cable to a recorder. It never needs charging, does not depend on Wi‑Fi, and records continuously if you wish. It is the right choice wherever a cable can be run — and cables can be run to more places than people expect.

A wireless camera is easier to install and belongs where wire cannot go: a barn, a rental, a spot far from the house. Its costs are batteries or a power outlet, dependence on Wi‑Fi (which is weakest exactly where cameras go — outside, through walls), and, in most consumer brands, dependence on a company's cloud and subscription. Use them where they are the only option, not by default.

Local recording versus the cloud

This is the decision most homeowners never realize they are making. Cloud cameras send video of your front door to a company's servers, charge a monthly fee for keeping it, and stop working — or lose features — when the company changes its plans, is bought, or is breached. Local recording keeps footage on a recorder in your home; you view it live or recorded from your phone over an encrypted connection, and nobody else has a copy.

Cloud recording has one honest advantage: if a burglar takes the recorder, the footage survives. This can be addressed locally, too — a recorder in a locked closet, an inexpensive off-site copy of important clips, or a hybrid where only alerts are backed up. We prefer local first and say so plainly. If you already own cloud cameras and they serve you, keep them; just know what you are depending on.

Alerts that mean something

The fastest way to make a camera useless is for it to notify you every time a car passes or a branch moves. Modern systems can distinguish a person from a pet or a passing car and can ignore parts of the picture (the street, a flag). Setting these “detection zones” and rules with care is the difference between a system the household trusts and one it silences within a week. It is a large part of what we spend our time on.

Neighbors, audio, and doing this decently

Aim cameras at your own property and its approaches. Where a view unavoidably includes a neighbor's yard or windows, use the camera's privacy mask to black out that portion. Recording audio is treated more strictly than video in the law of most states, and the rules on recording conversations vary; our practice is to leave outdoor microphones off unless there is a specific reason and to say so on the plan. This is our understanding as practitioners, not legal advice — but it is also simply the neighborly thing to do, and Protect Indiana would rather be known for that.