Home security without turning your house into a control room

Security specification has a tendency to escalate, because every additional device is easy to justify individually. The version that actually gets used is small: good locks on the doors that matter, a video door phone, a camera covering the entrance, and smoke detection where people sleep.

Smoke detection is the one most often skipped and the one most worth having. It is inexpensive, it needs no subscription, and it addresses the household risk that is both most likely and most serious. Put detectors outside bedrooms and in the corridor, not in the kitchen where cooking will make you disable them.

On cameras, resolution matters less than placement and light. A camera looking into a bright doorway will silhouette everyone who walks through it. Cover approaches rather than interiors, and think about where a face is actually visible at the height a person walks.

Whatever the system, decide who holds the recordings and where they live. A cloud subscription that lapses is a camera that records nothing, and a household video archive is genuinely sensitive data.

Whatever the system, decide who holds the recordings and where they live.