Oh no!! Someone that I don't know might be watching my turtles!

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Depends - what is your state of dress when mowing? If you wear a Borat style "mankini" it may be worth something someday - when you are rich and famous.

Just sayin'

SmileWavy

Old grey haired man wearing a LARGE floppy sun hat, t-shirt and old shorts. Usually rather sweaty. My "Mowing shorts" are pretty old, but have no holes that were not there when the shorts were new. My wife would divorce me if I tried the mankini, and the neighbors would go blind.

I have 3 Ring outdoor cameras. Now that I know that other people are watching my property I will have to wear a suit and tie when doing yard work.

I have an alexa. My closest neighbor is 3/4 of a mile away.

I have seen their network pop up in my network settings exactly 1 time in 13 years.

How will this affect me?

^^^ That's a very strong wifi signal to carry that far!

My life is boring. I still don’t want to give just anybody access to my yard.

Pornography - for all appetites - is available free of charge all day every day on the internet. I sincerely doubt even something as twisted as Glen wearing a lime green manikin and a Harpo Marx wig would move the Google needle enough that his high school crush from 40 years ago would be calling him and asking what happened to the wonderful boy she remembered at the Homecoming bonfire.

Hell, my bare ass is probably preserved in amber on my neighbors Ring; So what!? This is Portland!

Security cameras work
 

I installed Google nest cameras around my house, including their doorbell camera, in early January. Similar to RING and others. I chose Google just because we have other products from them and they had a good sale going.

Not long after the install we went to dinner early. The place is close by in our neighborhood. My alert dings 5 minutes after sitting down. A person is seen at the door.

This guy and some buddies had approached the front door. As soon as he saw the camera he said RING to his buddies and they booked.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678462382.jpg

If I had any doubts about the effectiveness of cameras and good exterior lighting, they are long gone.

He was looking for Roof Girl's Model Release:cool:

I'll be in the market soon...

I have/use three Nest cams...I like them also. Two of them are the old Drop-Cams that were bought out by Google.
The resolution is good (as shows in your pic)

One reason I like my old Drop-cams better is the camera sharing feature'
When Google took over....they quit that ability.

Long before the RING and other doorbell cameras were available, I installed a security system with two video cameras, and it is monitored. I then added 4 cameras on my own DVR system. All outdoors, covering the outside of the house. THE most boring video on the planet. Mostly my dogs in the back yard and leaves blowing around. I really prefer boring videos over action videos of my property.

I have a couple of signs that announce video coverage, and the cameras are visible.

We had one 16 year old kid deliver pizza to the house. He drove past the house a bit, and then backed up the driveway in what is likely his moms minivan and managed to wack into our dry stack flowerbed wall. It knocked one hunk of rock off and that fell onto the concrete driveway. It dented his mom's plastic bumper cover. The license tag and the pizza joint sign are clearly visible. I could have gone after him, but it took me 10 seconds to put the stone back on the wall, and there was a tiny scratch in the concrete driveway, and I likely could not find that scratch now so I left him explain the damage to his mom.

^^^ That's good because if his mom Karen shows up she'll tell you you put that wall in the wrong place and wants you to pay for repairs to he minivan.

Wow, crazy. Congrats on not having to deal with or worry about the after effects of numbnuts and his buddies.

My neighborhood about 2 weeks ago at 11pm. Brazen little do do head.

https://neighbors.ring.com/n/ZYL6LQ9HgO

That is scary.

Whatever you do, don't get a WYZE system. I got mine on the recommendation of a friend and it is a cheap POS. It stopped working after 2 years. Their tech support told me they no longer supported that system, but they would give me $25 off if I wanted to buy another POS system from them. :(

Looking for recommendations on a good system.

Did you share that video with the cops? Do you think they were told that you were not home?

I use trail cameras to catch varmints. This at Mom's house......

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678471458.JPG

I have an apartment building that had a dog poo issue. The manager lobbied for cameras. We put out some big bucks and got a top shelf system. Manager says that there is a COMPLETE turn around at the building -JUST from the cameras.

Interesting. I learned something in this.

I have a Nest doorbell that a friend gave me when she decided on the Ring ecosystem instead. Works fine and always alerts me when Amazon drops off a package. What I DON'T like is the idea of the monthly subscription service for someone else to store my video. Haven't decided on the path forward, so I'm just playing with real time functionality at this point.

For them, yes. This is Texas. Dude is playing a very dangerous game that could result in him becoming a bullet catcher.

I think it would be scary shooting someone even if you are defending yourself.

I have a DVR with multiple cams and foiled converter theft at my house.

Best cover in the world and nobody even thinks twice. Guy working for local utility dressed in safety vest. Converters were his second income.

Mid morning. Stops and goes to back of his truck, grabs a cordless cutoff saw.
Approaches my front door, rings bell and thinks nobody is home. I am watching this unfold live the whole time. Guy goes out to the street, looks around to check coast is clear, car approaches and as soon as the car passes comes up the driveway. Knelt down to look under my truck. Next thing he is under the truck.

Not going to get into details or frame by frame of the ending but he did not succeed.





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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678475316.jpg

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Makes sense, hiding in plain sight. Bad enough the utility companies robbing everyone but now the employees are at it also. There was a person last year walking around here in a high visibility vest looking like a meter reader that was robbing houses.

So did you get him busted by the cops, or just run him off?

I'm thinking Jeff H used a sawzall on the shinbone...

Or a pitbull. We know how THOSE work.

He does mention something about his ending, and no film footage. LOL

I would think a 9-1-1 call probably......

Good job, Jeff!

I saw where the mayor of NYC is saying no more mask wearing too. Not sure how that will end up but how convenient have the masks been for the all criminals? :rolleyes:

The guy was foiled and soiled. I came around the side of the house while he was under the truck. Can't elaborate more due to circumstances.

What I can say is this: was in 2021 three months after LE claimed they shut down the largest cat theft ring in SoCal history. Thefts did not skip a beat. Kept going on right under the noses. How targets were being cased or selected was what I believe LE did not know. They seemed to think it was just random hits. Trucks appear to be easy and quick since you can just crawl underneath them, no jacks involved.
The cordless cutoff saw this guy had was a diamond blade like you use on tile. Very quick and not loud like a reciprocating blade.

Who is going to question a local Utility fleet vehicle that drives around all day and thousands of people see them and do not even blink.

One year later a Federal bust took place where an etimated $38 million in stolen converters had been sold by two brothers to a recycler. The fence in turn sold the precious metal powders to a metal refinery for over $545 million.

$545 million is a lot of motive for thieves.

I sent it to a friend who does a lot of volunteer work with our city PD. He didn't think there was any follow up they could do since no laws were broken. I do think they watched us leave the house. I can't figure out why they then approached the front door though. We live on a corner and our front door is very visible to the street. The rear of the house is not.

Soo... Did you call the sheriff or coroner?

Now I'm convinced I need security cameras. I've been looking at outdoor wireless cameras. I need to cover 4 areas. I assume each camera needs WIFI access and I'm concerned that the wifi signal isn't strong enough in some areas where I want to put a camera. I need some way to measure the wifi signal in certain areas of the house.
I'm torn between the big two Nest and Ring, but I'm open to any other systems anyone can recommend and any suggestions as to the best affordable set-up for 4 outdoor cameras.

Use whatever smart phone that you have available.

You can use the "bars". I think that's what most phones display by default
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-v...1946556697.jpg

If that's not adequate
I think there are wifi signal strength apps available for Android (if it's not already built in).
And for Apple, you can download the "airport utility" (It's from Apple)
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252607588

I just gave it a shot and it worked. I disabled the wifi scanning in settings when I was done.

I installed two ring cameras. One on the garage that captures the whole driveway and one at the front door that shows anyone at the door. I could monitor my place when I was in England last summer and also make sure the gal that was feeding the cats was showing up. Only draw back is if the power goes out I have no internet and then no cameras.

Low tech, but I like my trail cameras. I have them writing high resolution .jpg files to the SD card.

Nest cam...
all is good...no robberies happening.
Click on 'enlarge screen' for proof.


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I’ve got six blink cameras covering the inside, outside and garage.

The garage camera gets the most action, because I check it to make sure I closed the garage door!😂

I use Blink as well. I have accumulated a lot of them over the years.

The wireless ones can go almost anywhere. I have them indoors and outdoors since I divide my time between a few homes. I can see if lights are on, if there are mice/snakes/bats moving around, etc. Outside, I can watch for prowlers, to see if a tree/limb hits my house, if we get a package left on the porch, if someone stops by and we are not at home, etc.

I mostly use the wired ones inside because they are cheap, but the wireless ones also relay the temperature so I can tell if my heat/cooling is working remotely (so I mix them). Inside, I generally don't even mount most of them because I move them around constantly to get the angle of what I need to observe...or move to another room or house. I set them on the floor or a shelf/countertop.

We see a lot of wild animals at night that one would never know are around. Usually racoons or foxes, but we were surprised at how often we had large bears on the front porch standing at our door late at night. It made me start being a bit more careful about going out in the dark without a light.

In one house, we do not even have a monitored alarm (as at the others) because they give us plenty of notice if anything happens (and can call the police ourselves). I think that having them in view is enough to keep most people/problems away. So far it has.

Pity you weren't at home.

There's nothing more satisfying than than running full speed outside jumping in the truck and going for a quick drive.