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In the past twenty years, devices such as nanny cameras have moved from the domain of the rich and famous and into the living rooms of ordinary, nine-to-five working folk. The same is true of formerly unaffordable technologies like door and window sensors and 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.

Since contacts guard your doors and windows, you should consider them the first line of defense for your home security system. Next on the list should be motion detector alarms. These, too, are relatively cheap. There are a few different technologies that allow for motion detection. Ultra wideband radar (BWR) detectors emit an inaudible signal over a fixed range. If that signal bounces back sooner than expected, the BWR detector knows that something has moved across its view, and trips the alarm.

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 home security surveillance system components, nanny cameras are probably the devices that have evolved the most. From the fuzzy, pixilated footage of yesteryear, these devices are now more sensitive than most human eyes and can be easily rigged to stream their footage to your very own secure website, allowing you to check on your baby even if you happen to be a continent away with nothing but a cellphone.

You can even have the data gathered by your home security surveillance system sent to a remote online storage cluster. Such clusters sell users whatever quantity of space they require at low rental rates. Assuming you're using a looped system of recording (which is really the wisest option, as multiple nanny cameras might record many terabytes worth of footage if left running for too long) you could purchase enough space to store days or weeks of footage for later perusal.

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.