Security System FAQs for Nowra and the Shoalhaven

Call us on (02) 4423 0225 or fill in the form at the bottom of this page. We will arrange an on-site security assessment and provide you with a free quote.

We want to see the place first. What a property needs comes down to its layout, its entry points and what is actually worth protecting, and none of that is visible from a price list.

Nowra and the Shoalhaven are home, and we work throughout Wollongong, the Illawarra and the Southern Highlands as well. Our office is at 1/21 Quinns Lane, South Nowra, open Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm.

Yes. Armitage Security holds NSW security Master Lic. No. 4103 885 46, and we supply and install only reliable and quality products that meet the ASIAL industry standard.

It matters because installing security equipment for other people is licensed work in NSW. Ask any installer for their master licence number before they start. A business that holds one will tell you without hesitating.

You can, and for some jobs it is a perfectly sensible thing to do. A plug-in camera watching a front door, a shed or a driveway is cheap, quick, and a great deal better than nothing. Nobody needs a licence to put one on their own house.

Where DIY kits come unstuck is when you start relying on one as your security system, because that is not what they were built to be. The gap between the two is worth understanding before you find out the hard way.

• They depend on your Wi-Fi, your router and your internet service. Lose any one of the three and the camera stops recording, and the gap is usually the exact stretch of time you needed it for.
• Battery cameras go flat and need charging, and they only wake on motion. By the time the sensor has triggered and the camera has started, the lead-in is gone and you have the middle of the event, not the start of it.
• They are cheap to defeat. Wi-Fi can be jammed, and cutting the power or the internet at the street knocks the whole kit out at once. A wired system with a battery backed recorder keeps recording through all of that.
• They go where a power point is, not where the coverage is needed. A wired camera goes at the right spot, at the right height, with the right lens for what you actually have to be able to see.
• Cloud clips are short and heavily compressed. Local recording keeps continuous footage at full quality for as long as the drive holds it, and continuous, good quality footage is what police and insurers ask for.
• The subscription is per camera, per month, for as long as you own it. Across four or five cameras that adds up against a system you buy once and then own outright.
• A DIY kit is a camera, not a security system. It will not tie in to your alarm sensors, and it cannot feed video verified monitoring, which only works when the camera and the alarm are working together.

There is a licensing side to it too. Fitting a kit to your own house is nobody's business but yours. Paying somebody else to install security equipment is licensed work in NSW, so if you are handing the job over, ask for the master licence number before anyone gets on a ladder. Ours is Master Lic. No. 4103 885 46.

So the honest answer is that a DIY kit is a decent extra pair of eyes, and it is not evidence and it is not a system. If a camera is there to protect something you would genuinely miss, have a wired camera system put in properly.

Traditional CCTV systems use analogue equipment. IP surveillance works over your network instead, and gives you high definition video from smaller, less obtrusive cameras. It has become far more affordable than it used to be.

Which one suits you comes down to the site and the budget, and it is one of the things the on-site assessment settles. There is a longer comparison in our article on the difference between IP and CCTV cameras.

Usually not. If you have a current analogue set up, we may be able to integrate it into an updated IP surveillance system, so you replace the parts that are holding you back and keep the rest.

That is what a hybrid camera system is: old analogue cameras and new IP cameras running on the one recorder, so you can upgrade in stages instead of all at once.

Yes. Remote viewing over the internet lets you check the property from wherever you happen to be, which is the whole point for anyone who travels, runs more than one site, or just wants to look in on the place while they are away.

Say so at the quote stage, because it affects which recorder and which cameras we put in.

It means your alarm does more than make a noise in a street where nobody is listening. When it triggers, the signal goes through to a monitoring provider who acts on it, day or night.

Armitage sets that up and connects your system to it. The watching itself is done by the provider, not by us. 24/7 back to base monitoring is available on our home and business alarm systems.

A standard alarm can only tell you that something tripped a sensor. Video verified monitoring pairs the alarm with camera footage, so the event can be looked at and confirmed as real before anyone is called out.

It earns its keep on sites that get a lot of false alarms: yards, warehouses, construction sites, and anywhere with wind, wildlife or a lot of movement after hours.

Usually, and it is worth fixing rather than putting up with. False alarms waste your time and everybody else's, and worse than that, they train the people around you to ignore the siren.

The cause is normally a sensor in the wrong place, a sensor that needs adjusting or replacing, or a system nobody has serviced in years. Have a read of our advice on security system maintenance, then give us a call and we will come and look at it.

A wearable pendant for somebody living on their own. If they have a fall or need help, one press sends a signal so help can be called.

Medicall suits people with a medical condition, anyone prone to falling, and families who would simply rather know help is at hand. We will come out and give you a free in-home demonstration and talk you through the options, with no obligation to buy anything.

During the build, while the framing is still open. Pre-wiring is easier, neater and cheaper than coming back afterwards: the holes are simple to drill before the plasterboard goes on, the electrical work happens in one visit instead of two, and you can run cable now for things you might want in five years.

Talk to us early rather than at handover. Retrofitting into a finished house is possible, it is just more work and it never looks as tidy.

An intercom is about knowing who is there. A front door or gate unit lets you identify a visitor before you let them in, and internal units let people talk between rooms or areas of a building.

Access control is about deciding who may go where, and when, without anyone having to answer a door at all. Plenty of sites end up with both, doing different jobs at the same entrance.

Not if you are on access control. Removing one person's card or code takes seconds and affects nobody else, which is the main reason businesses move off keys in the first place.

With keys, one person leaving means re-keying the building and re-issuing a key to everybody who still works there.

It depends on the property, and we would rather quote it than guess at it. What moves the price most is how many cameras or sensors you need, whether it goes in wired or wireless, and how hard the installation is to get to.

That is exactly why the on-site assessment and the quote are free. You get a real number for your place, rather than a package price built for somebody else's. Our article on what a home security system costs goes through the variables in more detail.

Yes. Interest free payment plans are available, so you can spread the cost instead of finding an upfront lump sum. Ask us about the payment plans when we quote and we will go through what applies to your job.

Yes. We are familiar with all the leading brands and can install, service and repair as required.

If you have inherited a system with a house or a lease and nobody has looked at it in years, that is a very ordinary call for us to get, and it is usually cheaper to sort out than to rip out.

Ring us and tell us what it is doing. We are a mobile team and we will respond promptly to your repair or troubleshooting needs and get the system back up and running effectively. Where a part has failed rather than drifted out of adjustment, we will replace it.