Getting started
Most people start with a camera, and a camera is the third thing worth buying. The order that actually helps is: stop the deliveries being taken, make the door harder to force, know when something opens, and only then record what happens. Each step costs less than the one before it does nothing for.
There is a natural order to securing a house, and almost nobody follows it.
It is the most common property crime most households will ever experience, and it is the only one a single object prevents outright. A lockable box on the step ends it.
Not with a new lock — with the cylinder, which is what gets attacked, and with screws long enough to reach the frame behind the lining. A strike plate held by two 25 mm screws is what actually fails, and 80 mm screws cost nothing.
A contact sensor reports the moment a door or window starts to move, which is earlier and less ambiguous than a camera noticing somebody already inside.
Now it is worth having, because everything it records is already less likely to happen. Start outdoors, at the approach people actually use.
That the previous one is done. A camera on a door with a builder’s cylinder records the door being opened.
1080p · 360° pan, 130° tilt · 30 m IR · microSD to 512 GB · IP65
The cheapest way into a pan-and-tilt outdoor camera that records to its own card. TP-Link states 1080p, a 360° horizontal sweep and night vision to 30 m, and the listing is unusually frank about what the model is not.
Best for: A first outdoor camera on a wall that already has a socket nearby, where 1080p is enough and the card matters more than the picture.
≈ £33 / 31 €
Because a camera records what has already happened. A better cylinder, a parcel box and longer screws in a strike plate change whether it happens. Buy the things that prevent before the things that document — and then buy the camera, because knowing is worth something too.
Under a hundred euros for a cylinder, a camera and a sensor, plus a box of long screws that costs almost nothing and does more than any of them. The expensive parts of home security are rarely the effective ones.
Cameras, alarm kits and safes swing by thirty euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
