If you are concerned about the security of your home and your family in these uncertain times, then you have landed in the right place. We will describe a possibility of designing a CCTV home surveillance system using just a home PC, a number of cameras, even web cams, and the appropriate software. This should make for an inexpensive, budget CCTV security system for your home. Before we do so, we will warn you that, considering what is at stake, you may want to purchase a separate dedicated video surveillance system with a separate DVR. A dedicated system will likely allow for more security and more reliability. When you are absolutely determined that building a home PC CCTV system is the way to go, let's look at what components you could use. These are: Web cams to play a role of security cameras, a PC instead of a dedicated DVR, and the appropriate home PC CCTV software.

Use web cams?

Yes, you could use the regular, inexpensive web cams for your security cameras. Two drawbacks. First, you will need to make sure that your cables will be long enough. Usually, web cams come with USB cables. These can usually not be extended far beyond 5 meters, roughly 5 yards or so. The solution could be to place the cameras sufficiently close to the PC, or get a wireless web cam with a longer range.

Another issue with web cams is that they are not designed for night viewing, i.e., they usually have no infrared LED lights to "illuminate" the area at night, and neither do they have infrared sensitive sensors built into the camera. So, in order to protect your home at night, you'll have to implement security lighting that is either always on, or is triggered by motion detection, or heat detection. Once the lighting is on, the web cam will have sufficient light to record properly at night.

Use a home PC or laptop?

With the right software, and the incoming USB cables from web cams, yes, in principle you can use a home PC for home surveillance purposes. You can set up the software to start with the computer automatically and run in the background unless you are ready to view the footage. Two issues with using a home PC. First, likely, you will use the PC for other purposes, and as you know, other programs will likely interfere. They will share the RAM memory, they will share the disk space. As web cam video processing can be quite memory intensive to be sufficiently fast, this could significantly reduce the available memory of your PC, and cause either other programs, or even the security program itself to slow down and malfunction.

The other issue is shared hard drive. Home surveillance footage can usually expand over the entire drive unless you put in sufficient precautions that this will not happen, either by erasing the old footage or by stopping the recording. Keep that in mind, and especially, keep in mind that other programs are accessing the same disk space as well.

Use PC CCTV software?

There are several quality PC software for Microsoft Windows operating system that you can use to turn your home PC and a number of web cams into your home PC CCTV security system. As discussed elsewhere, when picking such software, be sure that it has built in not only the video image related alarms, such as motion detection alarm, but also alarms that alert you of a variety of possible problems, such as shortage of PC memory, or shortage of disk space. That way you will be able to do something about the problem before it brings your PC, and your security system down to a screeching halt, making it fail in its most important, home security function.

When you have taken care of all the precautions and warnings about using home PC CCTV software and your own PC, then we can recommend to take a look at this home PC CCTV software: Video Patrol by Honest Technology, available at a discount through this link.

Or, if you have analog cameras and you want to use your desktop PC for a CCTV DVR system, take a look at this PCI-based hardware/software combination at Amazon.

So now that you are prepared to turn your PC or laptop into a true CCTV surveillance system, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to be monitoring the home for security when out and about? Are you going to be using it to deter and prevent break ins? Are you going to use it together with a security alarm system to check on the area and see if the upcoming alarm warrants a reaction? Or, are you going to be using it to check up on your pet when you're not home? You can do all of the above and more! And a Home PC CCTV surveillance system will not break your budget either.