Here we go. It's number five of the global Bob Show. Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me, and I have no privacy have been waiting all week long to sing that lyric into the microphone here. Sorry for the bad singing, but I just cannot resist. This week's podcast is about security cameras. Somebody's watching me. So we're going to take a little trip down memory lane, and talk about where security cameras came from. How did we end up with the modern day security system. And some of the pitfalls you may want to watch out so you don't get yourself in trouble with the government. Today we have a special guest in studio. So this is a Globalbob show first, have a special guest here. However, he probably will not be talking into the mic much. And if I'm really lucky, he'll be really quiet. Today's special guest is my puppy Edward. Say hi, Ed. Okay, he just wants to lay here on the studio floor and lick his paws. So if you or someone that you know would like to be a special guest on the global Bob Show, feel free to reach out to me Globalbob show@gmail.com, or Twitter at Globalbob show. Now if you're a special guest on the show, we won't make you stay on the floor of the studio, we'll put you in a chair, put a microphone in front of your face. And you can either ask me the questions or I'll ask you the questions. However, it will be a lot of fun. If for some reason you can't make it to the studio, the modern technology, we can do it all remote security cameras as we know them today seem to be really common. Most houses have multiple security cameras connected up. And they transmit the video via IP technology over the network and up into the cloud. And some of them keep the storage here local. But it hasn't always been that way. When talking about technology. If you think about it, security cameras are relatively new. I know in 1927, the Russians were the first ones that were kind of accredited with a camera remote type operation, I would say what they did was they had a television camera. This is a 1927. Now they had a television camera that was aimed at the entrance to the Kremlin. And they had a wireless link set up and a TV monitor on the back end. I don't think at this time it was you know, recording and things, you know to tape definitely not VHS tape because that wouldn't be invented until you know the late 70s. But that was the real part where you had a camera watching something and people viewing it. Fast forward a little bit. It would not be until 1966 When Maria van Britton Brown, who lived in Queens, New York. She was also a nurse, which is interesting enough, she's the one that invented the modern day surveillance systems as we know it now they say necessity is the mother of inventions. Now, why didn't miss brown invent the system? Well, once I dug a little deeper, I found out that she lived in Queens, New York. And I guess at that time, it may have not been one of the best places to live. And so her and her husband put their heads together and figured out that if they could have a surveillance system, watch the door, then they would be able to remotely unlock the door. And so therefore they were safer if they were unlocking the door for guests that they may or may not know. So the next time you visit a jewelry store or one of the stores that have the buzzer system where you open up the first door then they buzz you in. Well you can thank Ms. Brown for that invention now that Miss Brown has invented and received a patent on the modern surveillance system as we know it. The next big jump in history for security cameras was in the mid 70s all the way through The 80s, maybe even to the to the late 80s. Do you know what that is? That's right, it was the invention of the VHS tape. So we have the cameras placed all around. And a lot of times they were just live feeds with somebody watching them. Now that the VHS tape has been invented, this would allow people to record the video locally. And they didn't have to have people watching the screens, you know, 24/7 365, what they would do is and like department stores, and other places, they would just have the cameras running. And then if something was stolen, or someone slipped and fell, they could go back to the recordings off of the VHS tapes, and then pull it off of there. So you didn't have to have somebody glued to the monitor, like the Russians did back in 1927. Moving forward into the 90s was the next real leap for the security cameras. One of the major problems that they had to solve for was having all these clunky tapes around everywhere. And plus, someone had to go change the tapes. A lot of times the businesses, they only had single tape recorders, so that means that the tape ran out, or if or while someone was changing it something happened, then they would lose that footage. So in the 90s, the security cameras go digital and with digital, they could do things like multi stream so they could record to a device and also stream across the network to a remote viewing center. And so this was really cool that these technologies were starting to evolve in such a way that eventually they would become commonplace in every house. It is in 1996. So a year before I graduated high school, that the platform was set for cameras to just explode everywhere. And it seems like in the 2000s, more and more people were deploying cameras at their houses, it wasn't just for businesses. And the reason why this explosion was allowed to happen was two things. One cameras have gone digital. The second thing is is that we had these IP cameras, now connecting a camera to an IP network and or a network such as your house. This allowed for lots and lots of flexibility, you could simply plug the camera into a cable, we call it an Ethernet cable, but basically a cable that can be ran through your house and then it could be hooked up to your home router. And from there, there was no need to have local recording, you can still have local recording. But I guarantee you most people send their recordings up to the cloud. This is common with like nest and ring doorbells and stuff like that. On the flip side, not only did we have the digital cameras, the solid state recording technology, so we didn't need these old VHS tapes anymore, we could put it on on the network. The main revolution happened also is that the components get cheaper and cheaper. At one time, these camera systems were so expensive and so massive. I think it was Sears, Sears Roebuck that rolled out the first one, and they paid like$1.2 million inside of one store, just to be able to monitor that store. Now in today's dollars, I did the calculation real fast. That would be like $11 million. Could you imagine $11 million to put in video cameras. Now back in those days, they said that Sears was doing that because they wanted to get rid of the dogs that were at their stores. Yes, that's right back in those days, they would close the store up and have a guard dog inside there. And because of liability and things like that they thought it was better to to go to the security cameras system. Now we know today these security cameras are pretty much plug and play. And if something breaks, you just throw them in the trash and grab another one. I know that when the first IP cameras came out, they were very expensive. But now they're you know, $100 or less. So this leads us to the first question I get asked quite often. And whenever I'd say quite often I would say this question comes up every few weeks. Someone gives me a call and says Brian, what security cameras are the best. I'm ready to deploy security cameras. I think you know a little bit about this, which ones would you recommend? And so when someone asked me that I have to kind of stop and think you know, have I been to that person's house? What do I think their security needs are and I'm no professional by any means. I've just have different types of cameras at my house. I know quite a bit about this. And so I first go down the path of telling them that you want the security cameras that are going to be the easiest to deploy and the less headache anybody that's ever messed around with security cameras, no, they can be a real pain in the butt. Specially the the newer ones that like we mentioned that are IP based. I mean those things are little computers in there. We put them out in the elements. We live here in sunny Florida, where the heat and humidity and it just wreaks havoc on them. So whenever I think about that, really two things come into mind, does this person need a solution with local storage, meaning that there's a box at their house, and they can record everything locally? Or do I think that a cloud storage solution would be the best fit for them. Now, there's pros and cons of both. One, the storage that is local is usually more expensive upfront, but you don't have the monthly fees usually, that you incur. But it's more complicated of a system. Because I know 10 times out of 10, people want to be able to view their cameras remotely. And so if you have your local storage, it's on a box, it's at your house, you got to have your router configured in such a way, there are some things that do some auto configuration, but for all intents and purposes, there's some network magic that needs to happen on your router. So you can view those remotely those videos and get your video alerts. But one thing to keep in mind is that if you record your video locally, that means someone could break into your house, like we've seen in all the movies where the old movies from the 90s where the guys go in, they robbed the bank or robbed the store and they say, give me the videotapes. Well, that same thing could happen at your house. Now on a cloud storage system, which is the one that I recommend it is good. But just know that it's simple to set up. Usually everything's just plug and play, no knowledge of networks required no none of these ports to open. And the one thing that I will caution about from a security perspective is that a lot of times if your internet is out, your recordings are out to now some of the high end systems high end cameras will do what they call a cache, which means they will record it locally onto the camera itself or maybe like a local box and then push it up to the cloud. But those are, you know, hybrid systems that can be more expensive. So when you have the other systems just know that you're highly dependent on the internet. So if you don't have good, stable solid internet, then, you know, if someone was to break in while the internet's down, you may or may not have that footage. So when do you make your decision, you just got to kind of weigh out the pros and cons. And the first one you have to lay out is do you want it in the cloud or not? Now, when you go to cloud, there's some privacy that some people have concerns with, because if they're pushing all that data, and to big tech companies cloud like Google or whoever has the camera system, then it's just like when you're using email and other services from big tech companies, the government can go to them and get a subpoena. And you may or may not know that your data is being handed over to the government, local storage, they would have to come to you to get that information. And I've had this happen before I had a security camera set up. And it was kind of catching the area of a nother piece of property that had gotten robbed, there was a dwelling that got robbed. And the cop saw my security cameras and made contact with me and asked me if I could review the cameras. They were extremely nice. Can you review the cameras? And if you see anything that may help us out? Could you let us know and we'll stop by and pick up the footage? Well, good news was I did find something that I felt like would help them it was a car that had went by at about the same time that they had received the alarm. And so I took that section out and took it off the recorder and the cops came by and I gave it to him on a thumb drive. Alright, this is a good time to talk about the transport mediums for security cameras, we've talked about the two options, you can either store the information locally, which is on a box somewhere in your house, or you could send it up to the cloud. However, those are IP connected cameras. And most cases, some people still do run the coax through which that's the older technology, the coax and they bring it all back to a head unit. But another rise and popularity with security cameras is also the cellular cameras. Now on my ranch, I utilize the cellular cameras quite a bit. They're probably around $200 for them. I mean they're more expensive. But what's really neat is is that they either run off of a battery pack or solar. Now these security cameras to try to save battery life. They only send still pictures. And before you discount the cameras with the still pictures I kind of like them better and more use cases, for two reasons. One, it has a cellular modem minutes. So it's not dependent upon the power being on, it's not dependent upon the network being up, I mean, the power at my house. So the network being up, what happens is, is that they'll snap a picture. And in my case, my cameras, they will snap a couple pictures in a row. And then they store it locally to a little disk inside the camera. And then it also goes up to the cloud, and I get an alert on my phone. I use these cameras in strategic locations where there's not a lot of traffic. And I would like to keep an eye on it to see if maybe someone is coming through those ingress egress points. And so I think they are very cool. And also they can be moved really rapidly. So you could take one of these cellular cameras, and you could throw it in your car, let's say you, you know, maybe you're parked in a high crime area, or you just want to know what's going on inside your car, you can throw one in there, if you want to know what's happening, maybe you're going on a long vacation or something, you can just pop one in your kitchen. So those cellular cameras are really, really cool. Now, you know, the different types of cameras, right? highest level, you have cameras that record on site, or locally, in cameras that push to the cloud, you have cameras that take still pictures and go up via cellular and camera systems that have all the features of everything they record locally and push up to the cloud. And with those, you can also get something like a cradle point that would automatically fell over to cellular. So you have your cameras picked out, you know which system you want to use, you've got them all ordered, the big box arrives, now it's time to figure out where in the heck are we gonna put these cameras. Now, where I'm at, I use all of these technologies. And on my house, I have video cameras out in the pasture and various areas, I have a slew of the cellular cameras. But to me, the real power of a security system comes down to camera placement, you can have the best cameras in the world with the best service in the world and spend all the money in the world. But if that cameras not aiming at a good location, then it's really not worth anything. Now through trial and error, I have found what I believe is the best place for cameras. Now if your house is set up in such a way, you want to cover some key areas, one, any area that could be used to get in or outside your house. So this is your doors, your windows, and other places like that. You also have your driveway. So you want to see what's coming down your driveway. Now, when you place your cameras in these positions, you want to make sure that you catch the action that you want. Like you don't want these big wide framed areas, you want to be very, very narrow focus. And one of the reasons why I say that is is that these cameras get so dang noisy, that most people deploy them is kind of like a cycle, right? They deploy the cameras, they got to be able to view it on their phone, and every time they get a motion alert, they want to call somebody haven't figured out was that blue color, you know, then once the novelty wears off, they're like man, you know, they don't even look at him anymore. So what you want to do is have it to where you're not getting overloaded, the sensory overload. If you want to watch your garage door and the side entrance door to the garage, place your camera in such a way that it's tight in on that. The another thing that you want to do is raise it up just a little bit. Because any animal that goes by, say a cat or dog, they could trip that camera. So when you place it, you know, if you're trying to find a human going inside a door, chances are you know, if you just haven't where the bottom of the frame is a few feet up, then you're not going to catch all those other critters. So that's a good place. Another place you want to put a camera is at what I call a choke point. If you have fences with a gate entrance, nine times out of 10, the bad guy, they're going to come down the road, your gate is going to be open, they're going to come through there so you can watch that gate. But don't catch the road where all the traffic's coming by because if not, you're going to get sensory overload. Every time a car goes by, you're going to get an alert and you're going to have to look at it and determine whether it's Friend or foe. Now on your driveway cameras if you'll tilt those just a little bit so you're not catching the road but you're sketching it coming down the driveway. That's really going to cut the noise down. Another thing is is that when you're deploying these cameras try not to aim them directly. So trees. Now with modern day technology, they have these AI powered cameras, which I use those as well and really like them. And they will tell you, if it's a person, a dog, even some of the camera systems I have here, it can identify somebody delivering a package, which is really cool. But for it to do that, it has to sense motion and motion, it starts recording, and it sends it up to the cloud and the cloud AI, looks and sees if that is a person walking by, or if it's just leaves blowing. Regardless, it has to send that motion up. So it can make a determination, and then that's going to cost you bandwidth on your internet connection. But if your camera is running off of solar power, like a lot of my cameras are, well, then you're just wasting your battery. So make sure that you aim it just at those choke points. And aim in such a way that if you get an alert on it, it's a pretty solid alert. Okay, so you got your cameras placed in all the right locations, all your choke points, you've done all your testing your tuning, you've had your wife walked by many times or your kid to make sure that it will alert you immediately if it detects a human. Now you want to start putting up more cameras. Just be careful when you're putting up excessive amounts of cameras, you do not want to be a spy. We don't need big brother watching us. So we also don't need the big neighbor watching us either. You have to remember that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now, this gets some people in trouble. And this is usually the way it works, right? The neighbors party way too much. And you tell them to turn it down. They call the cops the cops come out like party what party we don't know about a party because everybody left. So you get the bright idea. You're like, Hey, I'm just gonna aim a camera over their their house. So next time they have a party, I can give the footage to the cops. Not a good idea. Like I said people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Matter of fact, did you know that in the state that I live at one of the catches is, is that there's a law that says that Florida is a two part consent state to audio recording. I didn't say video recording. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a cop. This is what I found in my research. It's the audio recording. Most security cameras have audio built in, even though that camera is on your property, and it's aimed at your neighbor's house. And it's totally legal. If that camera was to record any conversation like it picks it up because it's recording other things, while your neighbor may have a case against you, and it is a third degree felony here in Florida, which third degree felony means five years in prison and $5,000 Fine. I want to think that this came from some of maybe the old blue book laws where people were recording each other with tape recorders and stuff. That's why it became a third party state. But if you look at it, and you realize that your cameras are Aimin, and they happen to be catching your neighbor's house, it's okay if it's looking at something else. Let me give you a perfect example. If you have a camera that's aimed at the end of your driveway, because you want to see Amazon deliveries and it happens to catch your neighbor's yard as well. Well, it's the front yard probably, then that's okay. If you take and put a camera on the roof of your house to look down into your neighbor's yard, well, that's not okay. Because your neighbor maybe has a privacy fence up. So with that privacy fence, they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. So you don't want to be a spy because you may be the one going to jail when you call in for a noise ordinance. Let me expand this just a little bit more. A lot of my relatives have newborn babies, kids, which first thing they do is go out and get a security camera and put it you know, in the baby's bed room so they can monitor it remotely. And of course it's got audio on it and things like that. So they hire a nanny, and everybody wants to make sure that behind closed doors their kids being taken care of so you can buy some of these security cameras or nanny cams and they can be disguised and things like alarm clocks, teddy bears, you name it picture frames, you can embed these cameras in there, but you better tell the nanny that all activity inside the house is being recorded. both video and audio because yes, I know I cringe whenever I say this, but even a camera in your house in your private domain is recording audio and video to keep your child safe. That is illegal if someone comes into your house and you record them without their knowledge. So there's a few things that you want to consider when deploying these security cameras. Another question I get is how do all these security cameras get hacked? How do I keep my security cameras from getting hacked? A lot of hacks that you see happening is usually cameras that are not cloud based cameras, cloud based cameras like ring and nest, those cameras are pushing data from the camera through your router and up into the network. Now, of course, someone can hack your Nest account or Google account. And, in essence, view your cameras. But that's not the cameras themselves getting hacked. A lot of those nanny cams they get hacked, or what I like to call cheap Chinese cameras are CCCS. Now these cheap Chinese cameras, what they do is don't push up to the cloud, they open up a firewall rule on your router, now just think of a firewall rule as something that says yes, traffic from the internet can get in, they will automatically open up that firewall rule. And once that is opened, someone on the internet would have direct access to that camera, via the Internet and into your home network. And if there's a way to compromise that camera, then they would be able to view that nanny cam or that baby cam. And that's where we see a lot of it. Because there's a lot of companies that just want to get into this camera business. And so they'll go to China and have what we call a white label camera, they'll have that branded with their logo, because all they care is having a security camera with their logo on it. But what you don't realize is that that same security camera, it can be marketed under hundreds and hundreds of different names. And if one person gets an exploit into that one manufacturers system, then they have access to all these different brand name cameras. If you want to think of it from a security perspective, in my professional opinion, the most secure cameras are the ones that do not open up any firewall rules and that they go up into the cloud. But now rewind back to the beginning of this podcast, we talked about there some things around the cloud, like someone could ask for access to your data, a government entity, and they could hand it over without asking you. So you just gotta weigh out the pros and cons. To me, I use both systems. And I store locally, I pushed to the cloud. And frankly, I don't care if government wants to have access to my cameras, they can have all the access they want. But when you're deploying these cameras out, just take all this into consideration. Do not get too paranoid about who's looking at your video, try to get some good quality cameras. And just like with anything, the easiest ones to deploy, the easiest ones to use are going to be your best cameras. Alright, we're coming up on the bottom of the half hour. Just want to thank you all who have stayed along with me during the podcast here. And we are going to answer the number one question I get every single time when security cameras come up. Globalbob Which cameras do you use? Now I just want to say I'm not affiliated with any of these companies. I'm not a spokesman for them, I don't want to invest in them. These are just the companies that I found that can supply me the camera that does what I need it to do. If we take it from the top, the spy point camera with cellular built in is my go to for my cellular cameras. It records on a little less Deckard. Once you purchased the camera, I think you can get 50 to 100 Free pictures a month, which is another reason why I say it's very important where you place the camera right because you don't want to pay for the service. You just you know if you can stay below that 50 or 100 pictures a mug then it'd be essentially free so I like the spy point camera. The next camera I use and the one that's most deployed. Here at the ranch is the Arlo camera, very good cameras. What I really like about these cameras is is that it has the option to store locally and push to the cloud. Moreover, their battery power and all of their cameras are battery powered, and they have a little light little LED light them, and they connect up via wireless technology. So you can connect them using your home Wi Fi system. With that said, the third camera that I use this by a company called am crest. And crest cameras are very good cameras, they're high quality high resolution cameras. And they really just kind of fit the bill for the professional camera. So am crest is the camera. Now the am crest cameras that I use, I hooked them to a server. And that server is running a software called xeoma. And xeoma is kind of like the digital video recorder. But what's really neat about xeoma is that you can hook all kinds of artificial intelligence type things or services into it. So some of the AI services that I have run in is slip and fall. And it will alert you and say possible slip and fall. The other really neat service I just got hooked in to the xeoma is the license plate reader. So when someone drives past, if it can capture a good image of the license plate, it will tell you who it's registered to. Moreover, with all the AI that's built into xeoma, and using high quality and crest cameras, you can do facial recognition. So you could upload your wife's picture your nannies picture your yard man's picture, all these folks is pictures. And so when you get an alert on your phone, it's not just saying person, it will actually tell you the person's name that has the facial recognition on all of this stuff is really cool. And if anybody needs more information on it, please do not hesitate. No, I will not come install your security cameras. But I will tell you everything I know and all the mistakes I have made along the way. And the goal of this is so you don't make the same mistakes that I have. I've deployed lots of different brands of cameras, lots of different technology. And the ones that I mentioned, those are the ones that work for me, your mileage may vary. So with that, I'll see everybody next time. Thank you so much for subscribing to the podcast. I do this for you all. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if there's a topic you want me to cover. And I do take fan suggestions. This week's topic was submitted by my wife. She asked about security cameras. And as I got to talking to her about them, I quickly realized, Hey, we should make a podcast about this. Especially around the legal part where we didn't know that Amen, a security camera at your neighbor's house could get you in trouble. Not for the video but for the audience. So with that, I want to say thank you very much for tuning in. And we will see you next week where we cover another topic that was submitted by my brother cannot wait to dive into that. Everybody have a good weekend. We'll see you soon.