Closed-circuit television, more commonly known as CCTV, has come a long way ever since its invention in the 1940s. While it was already commercially available in the early 1950s, its first iteration can only be used for live monitoring. It was only when the VCR was invented in the 70s that gave it the ability to record video. This specific feature made it a useful tool for surveillance and allowed users to review footage as and when they needed to. As a result, CCTV became very popular and was adopted by large businesses.
Fast forward to today, CCTV has become a staple in all kinds of establishments, big and small. What was once limited to large institutions and to a wealthy few has now become affordable to the general public. A decade ago, it would have cost you tens of thousands of pesos just to have CCTV in your home. Now, you just need to shell out a fraction of that cost and you’ll have your very own “CCTV”.
Smart Cameras
Why did we put quotation marks in CCTV? Because CCTVs and smart cameras are different. While they basically provide the same service to the user, smart cameras have way more features compared to traditional CCTVs. If you don’t have one in your home yet, here are the top 7 reasons why you should get one now.
1. Real-time viewing… ANYWHERE!
With smart cameras, not only can you view your home or business in real-time, you can actually view it wherever you are and whenever you want! A strong and stable internet connection is the only prerequisite for this. Whether you’re in the office or on vacation thousands of kilometers away, all you need to do is to open an app and you’ll immediately see what’s going on in your home or business. Depending on the model you purchased, you can even use the pan-tilt-zoom function of your camera to zero in on a specific area.
2. Easy to set-up
Traditional CCTVs required several professionals to set them up. Aside from configuring the settings of the DVR, cables had to be placed around your home so the cameras can send back analog signals to the DVR for conversion and compression. This complex task has been completely removed from smart cameras since they are considered plug and play devices. All you need to do is to connect your smart camera to your Wi-Fi and follow the on-screen instructions of the app on how to set it up. That’s it!
3. It’s WIRELESS
One of the disadvantages of CCTVs is that once you have them installed, it will be difficult and quite expensive to relocate the cameras. This is not a problem with smart cameras given its wireless feature. If you need to place your camera in a different location of your home or business, you just simply transfer it there! As long as it is in an area where there’s a strong and stable Wi-Fi signal, it will automatically reconnect to your router after it boots up. IT’S THAT EASY!
4. Motion detection and motion tracking
Smart cameras can detect motion and can even automatically track them for you! You just need to change the settings in the app. If you were to follow a moving person or object in traditional CCTVs, it would entail a person manning the camera the whole time. He/She would then have to manually control the camera to follow the moving person or object.
With smart cameras, all these are done automatically and you can also program the camera to notify you in the app when it detects movement. You can even change its recording mode from Non-stop to Event Recording. This allows the camera to start recording only after it detects movement. If you need to review an incident, this would come in handy since you don’t need to review hours of footage just to find it. Of course, this is just a feature of the smart camera which you may or may not enable. Sensors have a limited range so if the movement is beyond that range, it might not trigger the recording function of the smart camera.
5. Two-way audio
With two-way audio, you can talk to your kids through the smart camera. When you see little Lucas eating cake that’s for his sister’s birthday tomorrow, you can instantly tell him not to 😁 It’s a monitoring, video recording device and intercom all rolled into one.
6. Storage
Another reason that made old CCTVs expensive is that you also need to purchase a digital video recorder (DVR) with the surveillance cameras. With smart cameras, you just need a micro SD so your camera can start recording videos locally. If you want to record a longer period of time or you want to make sure that no one will be able to tamper the recording, you can subscribe to a paid plan which uploads your videos to a cloud storage facility. This will enable you to view your videos anytime through the app.
7. Affordable
As you can see, smart cameras provide a ton of features that traditional CCTVs don’t. What’s good about it is that you get to enjoy these features without having to break the bank. For less than Php2,000, you can have your own smart camera and monitor your home anywhere, anytime!
If you’re looking for a smart camera, then you’re in the right place. We have a smart camera that has all the features that we have outlined above. To learn more about it, please click on this link – Smart Camera.
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