Place an Outdoor Camera

Before you start

• Walk the property from outside at dusk and note which approaches are hidden from the street. Those are the placements worth paying for.
• Read the cameras, privacy and the rules page before deciding where a lens points, especially where it will overlook a shared space or a boundary.
• Work out how it gets power. An outdoor run is the part of this job that most often needs an electrician.
• Check whether exterior fittings are permitted if you are in a managed building or an association.

The job

1. Choose two placements, not sixThe door people actually use, and the one approach that cannot be seen from the street. That combination covers the situations that matter and produces a number of alerts a household can still read. Six cameras produce six times the notifications and the same amount of attention.
2. Mount high enough to survive, low enough to identifyToo low and the camera is within reach; too high and everybody in the frame is a hat. Aim for above reach but angled down enough that a face crossing the frame is recognizable at the distance you care about. Hold it up and check the live view before you drill.
3. Point it along a path, not at a wide empty areaA camera looking down the line somebody has to walk gets several seconds of usable frames. A camera looking across an open yard gets a figure crossing the frame in half a second at an angle. The narrow, obvious approach is the better target every time.
4. Deal with the light before the lensCheck what is behind the subject at the time of day that matters. A camera facing a sunset produces silhouettes for two hours a day. A camera facing a bright security light does the same all night. Moving the camera is usually easier than fixing the light.
5. Run the cable so it is not the weak pointCable through a wall, into a box, with a drip loop, and no run left dangling where it can be pulled. If the route means drilling through the exterior envelope or working near mains wiring, that is a job for an electrician rather than a Sunday.
6. Tune zones and review after a weekSet activity zones to your own ground, then live with it for a week and look at what it actually sent you. Almost every install needs one round of trimming before the alerts become something a household reads rather than dismisses.

Stop and call somebody if

• The power run means working on mains wiring or drilling through structure you cannot see behind. Get an electrician.
• The only good angle points into a neighbor’s window or across their garden. Find another angle.
• You are on a ladder above the ground floor. The footage is not worth the fall.

What goes wrong

• Buying cameras before fixing the door they are pointed at.
• Covering every side of the house and then muting the app in the second week.
• Mounting where a hedge will grow into the frame by August.

Where this applies

• The Back Door — Privacy: a back door is usually the only approach to the house where somebody can work unobserved for as long as they like.
• The Garage Side Door — Specification: the side door is almost always the cheapest door on the property, with the cheapest lock, and on an attached garage it opens into the house.
• The Front Door — The jamb, not the lock: on most homes the strike plate is held by screws that stop inside a thin board nailed to the framing behind it.

Hardware this job may need

• Security Cameras — seeing what happened, and knowing where the footage lives

Sources

• Electrical Safety Foundation International — home electrical safety
• FTC Consumer Advice — online privacy and security guidance