What is it good for if they knock out cameras from being able to report activity to a person? Video probably will not help catch the bad guys.
I use cameras with ethernet and PoE, those are also cheaper than wifi. On the other side of the cable there is PoE injection, ethernet switch, recording and object detection server, all connected to a UPS battery. If power goes down, I still have cameras and network running for a few hours, notifying and alarming if anyone trespasses.
When power goes down, I also get notification with snapshot of the incoming electricity box on the street, to know if it was local issue caused by a person, or something else.
Yes I was originally going to use Ubiquiti cameras and PoE for this (Ubiquiti cameras store data locally too so a single chunky UPS would cover everything) but for me the problem was the cable runs. They were just not really feasible in my house without considerable work - there was no easy path to run cables under floorboards or through loft spaces etc - I would have had to cut channels in interior brick walls, install conduit, replaster, repaint, then pull the cables through etc. For one camera location I would have had to go through a bathroom too so would need to retile! It would have been the gold plated solution yes, but would have required significant work and disruption to install.
With WiFi cameras I was just able to spur into nearby power which was already wired into the house. Each camera took maybe 30 minutes to do a neat clean permanent install. Running ethernet and making good would have taken many days potentially weeks, and as others have said it is mostly about deterrent and peace of mind.
It is easy (and kinda fun!) to get paranoid and get carried away planning all this stuff out and thinking about "what if..." scenarios, but ultimately home burglaries are typically just opportunistic things without much premeditation or planning. Sure if you are a specific high-risk target and people are going out of their way to target you then sure go ahead, but you'd probably just be better off with dogs at that point!
Ubiquiti have a great name for switches. I have some. Unfortunately they chose not to provide an MJPEG stream on their cameras, which make's is very inconvenient (Read computationally non viable) to get the still images if you want to process the images with your own AI. And proactive camera security should be doing this and not relying on the AI that might be built into the cameras running on their tiny computers.
Yeah the integration/API was one other reason why I eventually didn't bother with Ubiquiti cameras (even though I have Ubiquiti WiFi APs and switches and management console already). Nest has a reasonable API (although it appears not to allow changing floodlight settings)
Not the GP but I have more or less this with all Unifi gear, a Dream Machine Pro and PoE switch in the network cupboard, a Flex PoE switch in the loft with 4×G5 Bullet cameras plugged into it.
Unifi restricts choice but everything works in a few clicks and both the web app and mobile app management interfaces.
The point here is to send them to some other house before they actually get into yours. Not to catch them. To some extent, catching them means you were not dissuasive enough in the first place.
For me as well it was quite reassuring to be able to piece together exactly what happened.
So rather than just being woken up by the noise of someone trying to batter the door down, I was able to go back and piece together 3 or 4 minutes of what happened - the cameras caught their car arriving, caught them going down a side road, caught them climbing over a fence at the back of my house, caught them trying to climb up onto the roof, caught them creeping around in the garden looking through windows, caught them trying to kick the door in, and then caught them running off and driving away.
I had enough that I was even able to write a post mortem with timestamps etc. This helped us make some security improvements, but for me personally it helped me process the whole situation - it was less traumatic for me to feel like I at least had "complete" info and was in control and generally feel less victimised and helpless.
That's a very good point yes. Understanding and satisfaction that the defenses worked (and how they worked). Closure basically. Far better than the alternative (of a big mess in the house and not knowing how things failed - not being any better prepared after than before.)
I use cameras with ethernet and PoE, those are also cheaper than wifi. On the other side of the cable there is PoE injection, ethernet switch, recording and object detection server, all connected to a UPS battery. If power goes down, I still have cameras and network running for a few hours, notifying and alarming if anyone trespasses. When power goes down, I also get notification with snapshot of the incoming electricity box on the street, to know if it was local issue caused by a person, or something else.