Designing & Installing Devicebook Surveillance

Introduction

This section is about designing Devicebook Surveillance for a smart home, and subsequently installing devices. 

To learn about using Devicebook Surveillance, see Using Devicebook Surveillance

Designing Surveillance

When designing a devicebook Surveillance system for a home, you should consider the following questions:

1) Should there be surveillance inside the home, outside the home, or both?

2) Are there any locations which require more than one camera angle?

Generally, it is recommended to have outdoor surveillance: driveways, yards and gates. This helps monitor for visitors, intruders, or wild animals on the property.

Surveillance is useful inside the homes in many cases as well. They are great for monitoring pets while out of the home or children in another room. This also pairs well with the Devicebook Security Solution, to record automatically when intrusion is detected.

Device Choices

See the Device Selection Guide for more information about the different communication protocols and recommendations on specific device models. 

Installing Devicebook Surveillance

Install all devices following the manufacturer's instructions. When installing wireless cameras and sensors, take care to reduce the number of obstacles between the devices and the Devicebook Hub (or the nearest repeater, in the case of Z-Wave). Metal enclosures and objects in particular can significantly reduce wireless communication quality.

Setting Up & Testing Surveillance

Use House Check to set up all the devices in the home.

To verify that the Surveillance Solution has been installed properly, use the Devicebook App to make sure you can stream live video from each camera in the home. Then step in front of each motion sensor and wave. If the motion sensors are working, video should be recorded automatically on all cameras in the same location until after the area is vacant.

To learn more about using Surveillance, see Using Devicebook Surveillance.