Residential Physical Security
& Access Control
Protect your estate with enterprise-grade surveillance cameras, smart locks, and secure access control systems, all seamlessly integrated into your private network.
Every layer between the fence and the front door
Consumer kits stop at a camera and an app. An integrated estate security system covers every approach, every door, every entry event, and it all lives on your own network, not someone else's cloud.
4K outdoor and 2K indoor cameras, wired on PoE, recorded locally on an NVR. No subscriptions, no cloud, no third party watching your property.
Every exterior door gets a smart deadbolt with keypad, app and fob access. Every unlock is logged with a name and a timestamp.
Every door has its own reader and rule set. Staff, family, cleaners and guests each get their own credentials, and their own schedule.
Cameras, locks and access controllers each sit on their own VLAN. A compromised camera cannot reach your laptop, and a lock event cannot be spoofed from the internet.
What changes when security is properly integrated
Most homes already have a camera or two. What they do not have is a system. The difference shows up at 3 a.m. when something actually happens, and in what the homeowner can prove afterwards.
Four apps, three clouds, no shared truth
A doorbell camera from one brand, indoor cameras from another, a smart lock from a third. Each with its own app, its own cloud account, its own subscription. Nothing talks to anything.
- ✕Footage scattered across three cloud accounts
- ✕No shared timeline: a lock event and a camera event cannot be matched
- ✕Footage lost when the internet drops, or when the subscription lapses
- ✕Every device is a potential entry point into the home network
One system, one timeline, one owner
Every camera, lock and reader reports to the same NVR and access controller, over your own network. One app, one timeline, and every event is provable weeks later.
- ✓Every camera, lock and reader on one shared timeline
- ✓Footage stays on-site, even if the internet or the cloud goes down
- ✓Cross-referenced events: “who unlocked the back door at 19:42?”
- ✓Each device on its own VLAN, so nothing reaches the private network
The numbers every estate system ships with
Every installation ends with a signed document: camera coverage per zone, retention window, access log capacity and failover behaviour. These are typical figures from an integrated estate build.
Main camera stream at 8 MP, with a lower-bandwidth substream for remote viewing and mobile apps.
Continuous 24/7 recording with 16 TB RAID storage, expandable to 60 or 90 days on request.
From keypad press to deadbolt retract, measured locally. No cloud round trip, no waiting at the door.
Individual credentials per person, with schedules, expiry dates and full audit history per door.
Every space has a different job
The driveway needs to see who is coming. The garden needs to leave the neighbours alone. The kids' room needs a shutter. A good system treats each of those differently, instead of pointing four cameras at everything.
Every camera placed after a walk-through
We walk the property, look at where the sun rises, where the street lights hit, where the blind spots are, and where the neighbours' windows are. Every camera angle is chosen against that. Nothing is pointed at a wall, and nothing is pointed at someone else's garden.
Who goes where, when, and for how long
Every person in the household gets their own credential. Cleaners only get Tuesdays. Guests get the front door for the weekend. Trades get the side gate, not the house. Every unlock is named, timestamped and stored.
Shutters on indoor cameras
Every indoor camera in the private areas has a physical shutter. When it is closed, the lens is blocked and the microphone is disconnected, not just muted in software.
Recording survives a fire
A second copy of every clip is written to an encrypted drive in another building on the property, so an incident at the house does not destroy the evidence.
The whole property, not just the front door
Main house, guest house, garage, garden studio, workshop. Every building on the plot is treated as part of the same system. Point-to-point links carry the camera and access data back to the control room without wires through the garden. Every lock uses the same credentials, every camera records to the same NVR, and every event appears on the same timeline.
30 days of 24/7 footage
Continuous recording at 4K across every camera, stored on a 16 TB RAID array. Expandable to 60 or 90 days for households that need longer history.
Every part chosen for the property, not for the catalogue
A city apartment, a country estate and a coastal property each need a different combination of cameras, locks and readers. We pick components around the site, the weather and the way you actually use the property.
Outdoor cameras
4K turret and bullet cameras, IP66-rated, PoE powered, with long-range IR and options for radar or active deterrence on the highest-risk approaches.
Indoor cameras
2K indoor units with mechanical privacy shutters for bedrooms, nurseries and studies. Discreet, PoE or Wi-Fi, integrated with the same NVR.
Smart locks
Z-Wave and BLE deadbolts with keypad, app and fob entry. Every unlock is named and logged, and every code is per-person and revocable.
NVR & storage
16 TB RAID-capable NVR with hot-swap drives, UPS backup, encrypted at rest, and a local web interface for viewing from anywhere on your network.
Pick the depth that fits the property
The tiers below are examples to give you an idea. Within each one, the camera count, lock count, access rules and retention window are adapted to your site, your outbuildings and the way you use the property.
Front door essentials
A focused, tidy installation for a single-family home or townhouse. Front entry, driveway and rear door covered, with two smart locks and a compact NVR.
- Cameras4x 4K outdoor + 2x 2K indoor
- Locks2x smart deadbolt
- StorageNVR · 4 TB · 14 days
- NetworkCamera VLAN · PoE switch
Whole-home system
Full multi-floor household, garden and garage. Full perimeter coverage, every exterior door on smart locks, keypads per person and a 16 TB NVR with 30-day retention.
- Cameras8x 4K outdoor + 4x 2K indoor
- Locks4x smart locks + keypads
- AccessAccess controller · schedules
- StorageNVR · 16 TB · 30 days
Estate-grade build
Main house, guest house, outbuildings and perimeter. Point-to-point links, redundant storage, UPS-backed control room and full access control with audit log.
- Cameras16+ 4K outdoor + indoor
- Locks6+ smart locks + gate
- AccessMulti-building · ANPR option
- StorageNVR · 32 TB RAID · 60+ days
Examples only · Every property is different · No vendor lock-in
From the first walk-through to a signed coverage map
A short, tidy process. We walk the property first, design around what we find, and you get a signed coverage document before anything is drilled.
Site walk & survey
We walk the property with you and mark every approach, entry, blind spot and neighbour boundary. Every camera position is proposed against a real view, not a brochure angle.
Design & placement
Camera positions, lock positions, access rules, retention window and VLAN plan, all written down and agreed before a single hole is drilled or a single item is ordered.
Install & commissioning
Cameras mounted, cables run through conduit or existing voids, locks fitted, NVR and access controller configured. Then everything is tested zone by zone with you present.
Verify & hand over
You receive the coverage map, credentials list, retention window and access rules in writing. We walk the property with you and confirm every camera and door behaves as agreed.
Four cameras, three apps, one incident
This is the situation we see most often in homes that have “some cameras”. A lot of devices, no system. And then something happens.
An incident happens. The footage does not line up.
The household already had a doorbell camera, two indoor cameras and a smart lock. Different brands, different apps, three cloud subscriptions. When something actually happened, nobody could reconstruct it. The evidence existed, but it could not be assembled into a story.
- Three separate timelines. The doorbell app showed 19:42, the indoor camera app showed 19:41, and the lock app showed 19:44. Nobody could prove which event happened first.
- Cloud footage expired. The relevant clip was on a 7-day rolling free tier and had already been overwritten by the time the incident was reviewed.
- Neighbour camera as the only witness. The only usable footage came from a neighbour's system, because the household cameras had been pointed at the wrong angle.
- Internet outage blindspot. During the outage that night, none of the cameras recorded anything, because they only stored to the cloud.
- No access log. The smart lock had no per-person history. Nobody could say which code was used, or by whom.
The fix was not more cameras. It was one NVR, one access controller, one timeline and one person responsible for the system. Same house, completely different outcome the next time.
Local recording is non-negotiable
If the footage lives only in the cloud, it disappears the moment the internet does. A local NVR keeps recording through outages.
One shared timeline
Cameras, locks and sensors need to be on the same timeline, with the same timestamp, or the review is guesswork.
Cameras placed by design, not by convenience
A camera above a socket is convenient. A camera covering the approach is useful. They are rarely the same position.
Per-person access, always logged
If you cannot say who opened which door and when, the access control is decorative. Real access control logs every event.
Before, we had footage everywhere and proof nowhere. Now we have one timeline and we can actually reconstruct what happened.
Detached home · 4 camerasThe cleaners only get access on Tuesdays, and I can see every time they arrived or left. That alone justified the whole system.
Family home · access controlWhen the internet dropped, I expected to lose everything. It kept recording locally the whole time, and I could review it the next morning.
Rural property · local NVRBefore we design a system
The things people usually ask us before the first walk-through.
Is any of this recorded to the cloud?
No, not by default. Every camera records to a local NVR inside the property, and nothing leaves the site unless you specifically ask for an optional offsite backup. There are no monthly subscriptions, no third-party accounts, and no vendor who can see your footage. If you want remote access while you are away, you reach the NVR over an encrypted VPN, and the footage never sits on someone else's server.
What happens if the internet goes down?
Everything keeps working. Cameras keep recording to the NVR, smart locks keep working from the keypad and fob, and the access controller keeps enforcing its rules. You simply lose remote viewing until the connection is restored. Nothing is lost from the recordings, and no door is left unlocked because the internet dropped.
Will the cameras slow down my home network?
No. Cameras, locks and access readers all sit on their own VLANs, and the NVR is connected over a dedicated switch with PoE. Your personal devices, streaming, gaming and working from home never share bandwidth with the security system. The two networks are isolated from each other, so nothing on the camera side can reach your laptop.
Can I use my existing cameras or locks?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If your existing cameras speak ONVIF or RTSP, they can usually be added to the NVR and recorded locally alongside the new cameras. Consumer Wi-Fi cameras that only stream to a vendor cloud usually cannot be integrated. During the walk-through we tell you exactly what can be reused and what is better replaced.
How do you handle privacy in the home?
Indoor cameras in private areas are supplied with mechanical shutters that physically block the lens and disconnect the microphone when closed. We never place cameras with a view into a bedroom, bathroom or a neighbour's garden. Privacy zones are configured on every outdoor camera that has a neighbour in its field of view. Nothing about this is optional. It is how the system is designed from the first placement.
What about the locks — can someone lock me out?
No. Every smart lock keeps a mechanical key as a fallback, and the home is never left without physical access. Access credentials are managed by you, on a local controller that we install inside the property. There is no vendor, no cloud account and no third party who can change your locks or revoke your access. You own the controller, the credentials and the data.
How long is footage kept?
30 days of continuous 4K recording is the default for a full-home system, expandable to 60 or 90 days on request. The exact number depends on the camera count, the resolution and the storage capacity of the NVR. It is written into the design document before anything is installed, so there are no surprises afterwards.
Ready for a security system that actually works together?
From the first walk-through to the signed coverage map, Davidsons IT Agency designs, installs and commissions an integrated physical security system around your property: cameras, locks and access control, all on your own network, all recorded locally.
Book a Home Security Survey