Synology Surveillance Station

I have recommend Synology NAS as an excellent central storage for your Home network in my earlier post. I have also mentioned that it will double up as an excellent surveillance Station with the same look and feel of a costly corporate surveillance station. This has excellent management features, record /playback features and user defined locations for motion detection and alerts.
For setting up a Synology surveillance station you need to buy IP cameras in addition to the Synology Disk station you own already (ex: DS 211J). It supports most of the IP cameras available in the market and can monitor up to 36 channels. It supports 750 IP cameras which covers almost all popular IP cameras from reputed manufactures (D-link, Linksys).

Refer the following link to get an idea : http://www.synology.com/support/camera.php?lang=enu

It allows various mode of recording

1. Manual recording while live monitoring
2. Continuous recording
3. Motion Detection recording (You can specify the area and a threshold to trigger recording)
4. Alarm Detection recording etc…

Motion Detection Recording

You will be more interested to know this mode in details. Recording will commence either when the camera or Surveillance Station detects a motion beyond the threshold setting. The level of intelligence in this recording mode is dictated by how well the threshold area and sensitivity was setup. Only suspicious movement are recorded and cut down waste by eliminating unnecessary recordings.

For motion detection recording, you can either rely on the built-in motion detection mechanism of the camera, or leave it to Surveillance Station. User can define motion sensitivity and threshold to control the motion trigger. Designate up to 10 custom detection areas on the camera view and the recording will only begin when motion is detected within a designated area

It supports iPAD/ iPhone/ iPod Touch and Android tablets for controlling and viewing (DS Cam apps in iTunes store is free)

Pros

1. It is feature rich and excellent surveillance station
2. It needs only an IP Web Camera if you already own a Synology Diskstation.
3. It is excellent for live mentoring and recording

Cons

1. It is not very simple for non tech savvy folks
2. It is not meant for those who needs an alert system
3. You need to be little tech savvy to understand and appreciate the numerous features it offers.