NEST // home security cameras

A few months ago Sam and I took our first step towards home security with the Nest Hello Video Doorbell. You can find my post about that here!

It’s been such a helpful tool (mostly for peace-of-mind, but also to monitor our home and deliveries while we’re away) so we decided to add more security measures in and around the rest of the house. Neither of us have ever lived in a home with a security system, so this was new territory for us and we started with a lot of research on the different brands and systems. I have never liked the idea of a fully monitored system (like ADT) because it seems like such overkill (not to mention overpriced)! The keypads, alarms, timers, automatic police calls, etc. are intimidating and (I think) very error-prone. I’ve heard so many stories of house guests or pets setting off an alarm system accidentally. I’m sure they are very effective in an emergency, but it’s just not for us.

So we decided to go with cameras that we could monitor ourselves. Nest was the natural choice because we already have the doorbell and the entire system works together! But we also felt like it was the superior system after all of our research.

We chose the Nest Cam IQ and a Nest Aware subscription, which has 24/7 live video, phone alerts, motion tracking, night vision and 2-way microphones.

We started with the outdoor cameras, planning where to place them for optimal coverage. With our Nest Aware subscription, we can set activity zones and the cameras also learn familiar faces so we only get alerts when it’s necessary!

Indoors, we mounted a Nest Cam IQ in the living room. It’s the main room of our house and where any activity would take place if we were away. Luckily, so far, we’ve just been spying on the dogs (who loooooove to sleep on the couch while we’re gone).

The camera itself is really beautiful and minimalistic, so you could easily place it on a table, shelf or mantle, rather than mounting. You could also move it to different rooms in the house depending on your activity. Here you can see it sitting on our record player and then finally mounted in the top left corner of the room. It’s barely noticeable!