Hubs and I have a house in a quiet neighborhood, while our neighborhood is relatively safe, there’s still a bit of crime here and it just makes us feel safer. We are currently using a blink camera we got from Amazon on our front porch. At first it was okay, it’s motion sensitive, not constant feed.

Recently there have been a few times it hasn’t worked at all. We had a contractor pull into our driveway, he was talking with me for a good 20 min for a privacy fence estimate. Never pinged. Not when he pulled in, not while his truck was here, not as he left. Looking at the camera there’s no evidence anyone came or went.

Second time wind blew the back gate open. I let the dogs out, gate was closed, usually they are out forn15 to 20 min at a time, wind blew the gate open and had I not walked in the living room at the right time to see them walking down the street, I wouldn’t have known until it may have been too late.

We now keep the gate latched with a bungee cord because apparently the normal one isn’t enough…

We’ve tried messing with the sensitivity, we turn it up, it then gets set off every minute from wind moving our neigbors tree, shadows from the sunlight etc. Literally every minute, we turn it down just a smidge and it won’t pick up some things, like the contractor, the dogs getting out, yet it still picks up when we pull in or out of the driveway or when we get packages, the occisional stray dog or cat walking by, it’s like annoyingly selective.

By now we are just fed up with how it’s been. Ideally I’d like something that constantly records, and then we can go through and delete or save the footage, then we don’t have to worry about getting a million notifications.

Mainly I’d like two or three cameras, one for front of the house, one specifically for the drive way and one for the back yard. We’ve looked at a few options, ring, simply safe, Google etc and just aren’t sure what’s a decent option for what we want.

I just don’t wanna waste money going through system after system, so I need some suggestions, what do you use an pros an cons etc.

Thanks in advance for the help.