I have recently expanded my system, I have a TP-Link Tapo out door camera at the rear of the house watching the lane at the side (which is also the access to garage) and the garage with ‘activity’ zones to alert me if anyone goes near it. I’ve now expanded it to have a camera in the garage and door sensors.
The app is pretty reasonable and although they try to get you to sign up to a ‘cloud’ service it’s not needed at all, the cameras loop record to internal SD card or to a card in a little hub. The hub is needed to connect the door sensors. This can then be used to set up or control anything from lighting to power just by something being triggered (not that I have bothered with any of that.
EDIT.. It’s all wireless and easy to install.
I have a short cut on my phone home screen that sets the detection for the garage cam and sensors to live in 1 go which if triggered sounds an alarm in the house as well as notifies me .. well my phone.
It is a very cost effective system and you can add bits as you go. All wireless and pretty easy to set up etc.
The down side is I had to blank off the IR LED’s built in to the external camera and fit a couple of separate IR floods. The built in IR LED’s in the camera are so close to the camera itself that once on at night any mist, rain, cobweb, dust etc will trigger a movement or person alert. This is a problem for any self illuminating night camera so was kind of expected really.
Happy with it so far and can access and control it from anywhere very easy thanks to the wonders of the interweb (could keep an eye on the cats from Norway!).
I think the 4k external pan tilt etc camera was about 40 quid, door sensors 11, hub 15 and internal pan tilt etc camera about 18 – all ‘ish’ on amazon (they always have a sale on!)