One good reason for cameras. They promote civil behaviour. Since I installed a visible security camera above my front door I never had couriers throwing packag

One good reason for cameras. They promote civil behaviour. Since I installed a visible security camera above my front door I never had couriers throwing packages, they very rarely not show up and claim "no one was home" and so on. Also I had a neighbour damage my fence every single time he was doing his farm work (plowing, harvesting). In addition he would use an unfenced portion of my property as a turning place leaving deep/huge tire marks and did other silly shit like that despite me asking him many times not to do it. Once I installed cameras it hasn't happened once. Then there are other practical reasons, I can review the recordings to find out which way my cat went if he is gone for a long time, or I can check is he waiting in front of the door in the middle of the night without having to get out of bed. Also my cameras resolved a mystery how one of my cats got injured once (hint - deer really don't like cats). Finally, let's say there is a huge storm forecast and I'm away. I can check remotely everything is fine. Finally, cameras are very good for insurance purposes. At least in my country insurers are known to weasel they way out of paying very often. If you have an actual recording that is much more difficult for them to do. The only issue I have with most reasonably priced Cctv cameras is that they go towards more megapixels when they should go towards more IR sensitivity. Almost every consumer grade camera can be defeated at night if a subject is moving quickly. The picture will be smeared. So for ID purposes I use lower resolution more "professional " cameras. As for open source, I've been using ZoneMinder with local (and on camera) AI for ages.