Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. When you follow a link from this site to Amazon and buy something, we may receive a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and the price you pay is exactly the same as it would be had you gone to Amazon directly.

What that does and does not influence

It does not influence which products get recommended, and the structure of this site is the evidence. Several pages here conclude that the right answer is to spend less: that four cameras covering every approach beat eight overlapping ones, that Cat5e is entirely adequate where people are told to buy Cat6, that a cheap high endurance card is a fallback rather than a storage strategy, and that the expert tier is the wrong purchase for most readers. Every build guide has a "what you can skip" section for exactly this reason.

Products are also deliberately excluded. The catalog leaves out copper clad aluminium cable sold for powered runs, a switch whose power budget cannot carry the cameras it sits beside, relabelled grey market recorders, refurbished units listed alongside new stock, and the flood of unbranded network cameras with no firmware support path. Every one of those would have earned a commission.

Prices

Prices shown on this site come from the Amazon product listings and change often. Treat every figure and every running total as a guide rather than a quote, and check the current price on Amazon before buying.

Our research method

We do not test products in person and we never claim to. Recommendations are researched from published manufacturer specifications, the relevant standards, and verified owner reports. Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure, this site says it is not published rather than estimating it.