Home security surveillance systems have come a long way in the past twenty years and, as the frontline of technology has moved, so the prohibitive price tags on their more sophisticated components have fallen away. Things like nanny cameras have come out of the domain of the rich and famous, and become affordable for ordinary people with day jobs. The same is true of motion detector alarms and door and window 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.

PIR motion detector alarms, on the other hand, are sensitive to the infrared or 'black body' radiation emitted by the objects in their cone-shaped field of view. These devices are very effective and have become a staple of home security surveillance systems across the globe. Simply put, when an object of one temperature moves past an object of another temperature, disrupting that object's infrared emissions, a PIR motion detector alarm will read this change as motion. The term 'PIR' stands for Passive Infra-Red, as PIR detectors don't shine an infrared beam like those hi-tech security systems in the movies - you'd have to shell out significantly more cash for one of those babies.

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.

There is, of course, no reason you shouldn't have your entire home security surveillance system function in this manner. All you need to do is buy up a bunch of webcams and convert them into nanny cameras by putting them in common household objects and ornaments such as clocks and book-bindings. The only requirement is that your ornaments be located within reasonable proximity of a power point. The footage these makeshift nanny cameras capture can be transmitted directly to a storage cluster online, where it will remain, safe and secure, for days or weeks - the only dependency being how much you're willing to pay for the storage space. Keep in mind that an extensive home security surveillance system might require multiple terabytes of space for just a few days worth of surveillance.

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.