Having the best smart security camera inside or outside your home helps you protect and monitor your property, detect and deter intruders, greet visitors, and gain peace of mind while you’re away from home. But if your smart security camera isn’t set up properly or it's installed in the wrong place, you’re not giving your home proper protection or getting value out of your money.
When installing your smart security system, it can be easy to fall into common smart security camera mistakes. Whether you’ve put it too far away from your Wi-Fi or you’ve hidden your camera too well, the biggest mistake you can make when setting up your camera is putting it in a bad area. To make sure you’re capturing all the action and you aren’t missing any blind spots, avoid putting your smart security camera in these 6 indoor and outdoor places.
1. Behind obstructions
When setting up your smart security camera, you might be tempted to hide it so it doesn’t get stolen or so you can sneakily catch intruders from breaking and entering into hard-to-spot areas around your home. But hiding your camera means it’s more likely to get stuck behind obstructions, hit blind spots or be too far away from the action. Even if you’ve only partially hidden it behind the external wall of your house, this can obstruct parts of your cameras’ field of vision and cut out vital images and video.
To avoid this, put your smart security camera in clear commonly used spots in your home like your front or back doors, and make sure it’s not behind anything that will block your view. It’s also worth noting that most burglars use the most obvious spots like windows or doors to break in so you don’t need to be sneaky by hiding it in lesser used areas.
2. Between trees & plants
Whether you’re setting up a camera indoors or outdoors, try not to put them near or in between trees and plants. Again, the reason you might consider doing this is to hide your camera from intruders but you can ruin your view by a plants' quick growth or break your camera if a rogue tree branch gets blown into it by the wind. If you end up putting a security camera too near trees or bushes in your garden and they start growing out of control, you’ll also have to reinstall your camera which takes unnecessary time and money.
3. Places that are too high
For a better field of view, you might think having your camera high outside your house can solve all your problems. However, if your camera is too high, you won’t be able to make out key details about the people who visit your home. For example, if you’ve installed your camera too high and someone breaks in, the height of your camera can make it difficult to pick out any distinguishing features of the burglar. This can result in police not being able to find the perpetrator and can even lead to a lack of conviction.
To solve this issue, put your camera at a similar height or just above the height of your doors. If you’re worried about bad camera vision, make sure to choose a camera which has 180 or 360-degree viewing angles, like the Arlo Pro 5 or the TP-Link Kasa Spot KC100.
4. Places that are too low
Along the same vein, you don’t want your security camera to be too low either. With an outdoor security camera, you want to be able to see a full body view of the people coming to your house. If it’s at shoulder or chest height, you risk not being able to see your guests’ or intruders’ faces and your camera is more likely to get stolen. For indoor security cameras, if you put it in a spot where people can easily bump into it or your pet could knock it over, you risk your camera getting broken and having to constantly adjust and move it around.
5. Bedrooms
Regardless of whether you’re trying to catch someone breaking into your child’s bedroom or you’re just trying to keep them safe, having a camera in a bedroom isn’t a good idea. Simply put, it’s a violation of privacy and most of the footage is likely to be hours of sleeping which can clog up your video storage. Another big thing to keep in mind is that if someone hacks into your camera and accesses your video footage, hackers can see and share private moments and information. If your camera has two-way audio, hackers can also speak to you or your children over the microphone which isn’t something anyone wants to worry about or deal with.
6. Bathrooms
Similar to bedrooms, you never want to install a security camera in a bathroom because of privacy issues for your family or anyone who visits your home. While this seems like quite an obvious spot to not install a security camera, it’s also worth thinking about where your outdoor security camera is positioned. If you’re trying to get an overall view of your street and neighbourhood, make sure it’s not pointing into anyone’s bathroom as it’s illegal to record people without their knowledge and consent.
