Home security surveillance systems have come a long way in the past twenty years and, as the frontline of technology has moved, so the prohibitive price tags on their more sophisticated components have fallen away. Things like nanny cameras have come out of the domain of the rich and famous, and become affordable for ordinary people with day jobs. The same is true of motion detector alarms and door and window alarms.

Magnetic alarm contacts, the twin magnetic pads used to make door alarms, cost less than $4, and are available at the majority of major hardware stores. These contacts are used to form a circuit that's broken when a door or window is opened. They're so easy to install that many people these days are undertaking the job of incorporating them into their home security surveillance system themselves. Of course, if mucking about with silicone guns and tubes of wood glue isn't your bag, security companies such as ADT are usually willing to do the job at minimal cost for their customers (though this will, of course, only apply if you're signed up for their security services).

Installing contacts should be your first priority, as they constitute the first line of your home security surveillance system's defense against that hostile world trying to break into your home. The second line, should someone succeed in breaking in by smashing or cutting the glass of your windows, should be motion detector alarms. These are also fairly inexpensive. There are a few different types, which use different technological principles but wind up having pretty much the same effect. UWB (Ultra-Wideband) radar detectors are one. These emit sonar or radar signals, the same technology used to, you guessed it, detect enemy submarines in times of war. If the signal such a device emits gets bounced back sooner than expect, the device will register that something has moved across its detection field, and activate the alarm siren.

PIR motion detector alarms, on the other hand, are sensitive to the infrared or 'black body' radiation emitted by the objects in their cone-shaped field of view. These devices are very effective and have become a staple of home security surveillance systems across the globe. Simply put, when an object of one temperature moves past an object of another temperature, disrupting that object's infrared emissions, a PIR motion detector alarm will read this change as motion. The term 'PIR' stands for Passive Infra-Red, as PIR detectors don't shine an infrared beam like those hi-tech security systems in the movies - you'd have to shell out significantly more cash for one of those babies.

Out of all these devices, though, the potential of nanny cameras has probably grown the most. You can use them to check your house out at any time of day, by viewing their footage on your computer or cellphone. All you need to do is install them in the relevant parts of your home (which if you're actually a new parent, are those parts of the home where your baby should be), and you'll be able to tell whether the nanny's doing her job.

There is, of course, no reason you shouldn't have your entire home security surveillance system function in this manner. All you need to do is buy up a bunch of webcams and convert them into nanny cameras by putting them in common household objects and ornaments such as clocks and book-bindings. The only requirement is that your ornaments be located within reasonable proximity of a power point. The footage these makeshift nanny cameras capture can be transmitted directly to a storage cluster online, where it will remain, safe and secure, for days or weeks - the only dependency being how much you're willing to pay for the storage space. Keep in mind that an extensive home security surveillance system might require multiple terabytes of space for just a few days worth of surveillance.

Still, this is only cost-effective up to a point. Luckily, there's a simple way to get around the need for making excessively large quantities of storage space one of the costs of your home security surveillance system. All that you need to do is have you motion detector alarms and door and window alarms wired to your nanny cameras. If you set this system up in such a way that the various sensors or detectors set your home security surveillance system recording when there's movement in the house, you'll wind up eliminating the need for redundant recordings of empty rooms. You can also get cameras programmed with motion detection software to begin with - these will actuate this function without the need for any fancy fiddling on your part.

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