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The last twenty years has seen the complete democratization of communication and information technologies. Gizmos with functions formerly reserved for companies with hundreds of millions in their pockets can now be found on the desks of ordinary working people. High quality nanny cameras, which capture digital footage as perfect as any camcorder, are one of the technologies to make their way out of the homes of the wealthy and award-winning and into the lounges of the world. This is also the case with door and window alarms, and with the ubiquitous motion detector alarms.

Indeed, to say that window alarms now cost about as much as a few burgers from McDonalds is really no exaggeration. You can purchase contact pads, the simple magnetic components for door and window alarms, at large hardware and department stores, often at bargain-bin prices of under five dollars. These magnetic pads form a circuit which, when broken, signals the central alarm hub and gets that siren sounding. Even for someone with little experience in terms of working with hardware, taking on the task of installing contacts as part of their home security surveillance system will probably not pose much of a hurdle. You scarcely need more than the cabling, the contacts, some wood glue and a silicone gun. This is a service you can also have done for you by the majority of security companies, though you won't get their best prices unless you've signed up to use them to monitor your alarm system.

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.

Passive infra-red (PIR) motion detector alarms have become integral to most everyday home security surveillance systems. They measure the infrared light that radiates from objects within their fields of view. When an object of one temperature, such as person, passes before an infrared source with another temperature, such as a couch, the PIR detector registers that as motion. In this instance, the term 'passive' is used to indicate that PIR detectors do not actually emit a beam of infrared light (you'd need to pay quite a bit more for that), but just passively accepts incoming infrared light.

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.

The data from your nanny cameras can be streamed to an online storage cluster, and stored for days, weeks or months (depending on how much you're willing to pay for the privilege), allowing you to review incidents long after they transpire. Of course, online storage is only cheap up to a point - a serious home security surveillance system might call for many terabytes of storage space, assuming that you're recording every minute of every day from multiple cameras.

There is a way to get around this, of course. It's as simple as using your motion detector alarms, along with your door and window alarms, to activate your webcams, so that they're only switched on when there's actually something going on in the house. There is a variety of software designed to integrate home security surveillance systems that allows for this, and numerous brands of security camera come equipped with motion detection right out the box.