Some hoodlums shot at my house with a 9mm last Saturday. They managed to hit it both times. I think they were actually trying to hit a different hoodlum they were chasing as he ran past my house. (cop theory) They missed that loser.
Who would have thought this would be the first time a house of mine caught bullets after living in a rough Chicago neighborhood and then on the edge of a Houston hoodlum war zone. I thought we moved to a relatively safe hillbilly/redneck/hipster town.
We heard the shots. It sounded like they were coming from inside our house. POW! POW! The noise jerked me out of a drunken stupor, so it was really loud. I went and checked everywhere, walked outside. My hillbilly neighbors were all sleeping peacefully. I looked around in the house, saw nothing, then went back to bed.
The next morning we noticed glass on the floor and a bullet hole through a window. Outside, there was a second bullet hole in the side of the house. The window shot went through two panes of glass, a closed wooden blind, through the back of a built-in book case into the wall and substructure. No hope getting to that shell unless we take the wall apart.
The bullet that hit the side of the house only just managed to break the surface of the siding. The cops easily pulled out the shell. HardiePlank concrete siding is strong brother.
The cops did find both shell casings in the street.
What a circus that was later Saturday. Several police cars and the CSI (or whatever) cops on the scene measuring bullet holes and walking up and down the street looking for shell casings. My wife was basically in her pajamas on the walkway out near the street looking totally out of it confused as the cops were milling around. This affected her quite dramatically. I told her to come stand next to me so the neighbors didn't think we had been shooting at each other in some domestic disturbance. Rednecks/Hillbillies/Hipsters love something to gossip about.
My neighbor four houses over has a cheap security camera plugged into an electrical outlet and pointing out from their main front window onto our neighborhood street. She caught some pedestrian activity, then a sedan going up the street past her house at 12:40am. Then the camera shows the same car coming back down the street at 12:45am, passing in front of her house and then, about 5 seconds later (about the time they're at my house) gun shots: POW (one second) then POW. It's a bit chilling.
However, that's about all this camera was good for. The street is about
30 feet from the camera and you can't even tell what kind of car it was, let alone trying to get a still of a face or a license plate.
I've been researching the Internet and there are a plethora of options.
Here's what I want. Three decent cameras on the doors to my house. But, I want one camera that is super high definition with optical zoom that can do a frame capture of a hoodlum's tattoo from about 50-100 feet away.
I planned to do this DIY and asked my electrician about it. He recommended a security company. They were okay I guess, but I got the whole spiel and it just seems like a racket. The guy kept showing me clips from videos from his house cameras. Of course it's clear when a hoodlum is standing right next to the door. I'm not sure how many times I told him that that was all well and good, but I want to be able to see the individual flies buzzing around a pile of dog poop in the yard across the street.
I plan to buy all the equipment and either install it myself or have a person that does it all the time install it. That's not the issue. Also not the issue is iPhone apps, speakers, notifications, alerts etc. I'm assuming a lot of that will be available with whatever I end up with. If not, I'll figure something out.
I want to know if any of you guys have a security camera system that is really good and could do what I need. If so, recommendation please. Even if it's only the one or two cameras that are super high definition that can do what I want, that would be a start.
Thank you for listening.