CCTV near you

Retention is the first configuration decision and the one most often left at whatever the box shipped with. Decide how many days you want to keep, check that the storage in the system can actually hold that at the resolution and frame rate configured, and confirm what happens when the disk fills: a system that stops recording when full is worse than useless. Then confirm it by looking at the oldest footage on the system a month later.

Clocks are the detail that ruins otherwise good footage. If the recorder's time is wrong, or the cameras disagree with each other, correlating your footage with a neighbour's or with anything else becomes guesswork, and its value drops accordingly. Ask the installer to set time synchronisation properly and to show you where to check it, because clocks drift and a recorder that lost its settings in a power cut will not announce the fact.

Export is the part nobody rehearses. Before the installer leaves, retrieve a clip yourself, from a specified time, and save it somewhere off the system in a format that opens on an ordinary computer without the manufacturer's software. If that takes three attempts and a phone call on the day of installation, it will be impossible at seven in the morning after a break-in. Make sure a second person in the household can do it too.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner says the Privacy Act does not cover a security camera operated by an individual acting in a private capacity, though state or territory laws may apply. That is the position most households are in, and it is the reason a complaint to the federal regulator about a neighbour's camera goes nowhere.

The exception is worth knowing about because it is easy to fall into. A property that also hosts a business, a system that records people working there, or cameras installed on common property in a strata scheme are not obviously the same thing as a camera on a suburban house, and the obligations that attach can include how people are told, how footage is secured and how long it is kept. Several states also have specific legislation about surveillance of workers that is separate again from surveillance devices law.

If your property is in any of those categories, get advice on the specific arrangement rather than assuming household practice carries over. The general habits that the OAIC expects of covered organisations are a reasonable model regardless: tell people they may be recorded, keep recordings secure, and destroy or de-identify them when they are no longer needed.

Installing CCTV for security purposes is a licensed activity in its own right in several states, separate from any electrical licence. Western Australia, for example, licenses the installation, maintenance and repair of closed-circuit television for security purposes under its security installer scheme, with specific training required for that class. The schemes are administered by each state, often by the police, and the classes and titles do not match across borders.

A security licence is not an electrical licence, and the two rarely sit in the same person. Whatever touches fixed wiring on a CCTV job, most often the supply for the recorder cabinet or power out to an eave or a shed, has to be done by a licensed electrician, and Energy Safe Victoria's blunt formulation applies to all of it: unqualified electrical work is illegal as well as extremely dangerous.

The practical step is to ask a CCTV quote to name who does which part and what each person is licensed for. A system quoted by one company and installed by two trades is normal; a quote that does not distinguish them is a quote that has not thought about it.

The routine is short and it is about proving the system still works rather than about the cameras. Once a month, open the recorder, confirm every camera is present and recording, check that the oldest footage on the system is as old as you expect, and look at the clock. Once a quarter, export a clip to prove you still can, and change it up by asking a different member of the household to do it.

Hardware needs attention in an Australian summer. A recorder in a closed cupboard, a hot garage or a roof space runs at temperatures that shorten disk life dramatically, and a failing disk in a recorder is the most common silent failure in domestic CCTV. Give it air, keep dust off the vents, and treat a recorder that has started behaving oddly on hot afternoons as a thermal problem.

Security of the system itself matters as much as the footage. Change default passwords on the recorder, the cameras and any app account, keep firmware current, remove access for anyone who no longer needs it, and think hard before exposing a recorder directly to the internet. A CCTV system reachable from anywhere by anyone is worse than no CCTV at all.

The equipment is goods and the installation is a service, and the ACCC says consumers automatically receive guarantees on both. The guarantee that matters here is fitness for a purpose you made known: if you told the installer the system had to retain a fortnight of continuous footage and had to keep recording through a power cut, that is a stated purpose, and a system that does neither has not met it. Put those requirements in the email before the quote is accepted.

On LokalMatch you describe the property, what you need covered, how long you want footage kept and your postcode once, and CCTV installers covering that postcode contact you; the requests they receive are what they pay for. LokalMatch does not install anything, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend the businesses that respond, so checking the security licence, checking who does the electrical work and comparing what each quote actually includes is your part.