Using a Smartphone as the interface for your CCTV camera

If you keep up to date with the latest CCTV technologies you may have heard that compatibility between your camera and phone is just about the handiest tool in keeping your home or offices safe from burglars; whether you are near or far. If you don’t keep up to date, or perhaps haven’t entered the market for CCTV cameras, that’s okay; we at JMC Secure have kept up to date, and we’re here to walk you through how using a smartphone as an interface for your camera can go a long way to putting your mind at ease regarding your home security.

One of the many features currently being developed, that really shows off the innovations the CCTV industry has made over the last few years is object recognition. Technologies now allow for CCTV cameras to tell the difference between a person and a vehicle by itself, and this is fast becoming the industry standard. Not only that, but it will remember people who live with you, work with you, or even friends who visit. This is incredibly useful because when your camera detects an unrecognized face or car within its field of view, you’ll get a notification on your phone to live stream the footage. No one wants to be bombarded with useless notifications, especially when important footage could get buried, which is why it is a good thing that smartphone compatible CCTV systems will only notify you if someone who hasn’t visited you before approaches your property.

Don’t like what you see? These cameras allow you to record a live message for your intruder, from wherever you are. The last thing a robber wants to do is stick around if you’ve informed them you are calling the police. It will then either automatically save the footage to the cloud or your phone, with a timestamp to make it easier to find if you ever need to show it as evidence.

However, the common mindset for property owners today is that this sort of thing won’t happen to you. Firstly, it could happen to anyone! Thankfully, though, this CCTV technology can serve you a lot more than just home protection. If a parcel is being delivered to you whilst you are away, use the two-way audio function to tell them where you’d like them to leave it. Technology’s innovation focus, in general, is often to simply make our lives easier to manage, and this is a fantastic input from our industry.

One con to note when deciding whether to buy a smartphone compatible CCTV camera is that, because they work via your wi-fi, they can eat up your bandwidth. Unfortunately, this means that seeing buffering rings may not be uncommon if your internet is below the average speed.

Despite this downfall however, all of this is extremely easy to set-up and controlled by a simple app. Often the CCTV camera you buy will have an accompanying app that has been developed by the manufacturers, so you know you’re going to be using a well-thought out piece of software if you stick to quality brands.

All in all, we think it’s a huge leap in the right direction for making CCTV cameras a home necessity. Ease of use and quality of life improvements like these are more of an easier sell than a simple CCTV camera for home protection. So now you can keep your home secure, and maybe even have some fun with it.