Alarms / Infrared security cameras / webcams

So, live in an 5th floor apartment, just had a visit from the most dodgy person i've ever had knock on my door pretending he was lost. He was so dodgy my first instinct was to hit him, then ask him what he wanted

Nobody is getting anything big out of here in a hurry so I need options to protect a) girlfriend when i'm not here and b) small expensive electronics.

Anyone found anything that seems like a great deterrent or failproof way to just keep people out of one primary door?

New Yorkers seem to just have big heavy fuck-off doors and 5 locks...?

"Smile you are on camera" ?

Put one of those black camera boxes they have in casinos above the front door and print a sticker that says the area is being monitored 24/7 by cameras ... blah blah blah! Unless you actually want to get some monitoring then come to my work and lets go down the road to the place that specializes in CCTV and what not!

I stayed in an apartment in rome that had a front door key that you could turn 3 or 4 times. Each turn ratcheted 3 dead bolts at the normal handle position and a further 4 dead bolts (2 at the top 2 at the bottom) around the door. it felt like opening a safe.

a motion sensor attached to a recording of a big dog?

Anyone who really wants in is going to get in regardless of the presence of surveillance or alarms. An issue noted with schools who have deployed surveillance (in some cases, $100k worth of high quality Axis IP cams) is that anyone committing a crime usually has either a hoodie on, or a bandana covering their face, making the footage pretty useless.

So, you'd be better off working the physical security aspect. A whopping great deadbolt would do it, 2 if you feel like it. All you wanna do is make a potential theif take a look and go 'ugh' and move on to the neighbours door, with it's lesser lock that can be kicked open in about 10 seconds.

We've spent about $30k now in the past 2 years increasing physical security (i.e. fuck off razorwire topped fences around the whole campus) and it's made a big difference. Until someone tried this:

If you do wanna throw tech at it, those Axis IP cam's I mentioned are REALLY nice bits of kit, but their price reflects that. Something like $3k for nice pan/tilt/zoom model.

Low end stuff tends to be shit (have played with a few), unless you cobble shit together yourself piped into an analog capture card with some motion detecting software. Have this setup running somewhere and it works well. As soon as motion is detected, it starts recording both video and jpg's and triggers email alerts at which point we can view online. But overkill and ugly for home use. And is *nix based. ugh.

Vote for Labour. Voting for Labour will help pay for a substantial police force, and the sort of justice system that is steadily reducing per capita crime.

u srs?