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The term 'DIY home security system' probably, for most people, calls to mind the image of a young McCaulay Culkin, beating the heck of the marauding crooks in Home Alone I and II. Of course, Home Alone was an early 90's phenomenon, popular in a time when auto-detection, visual and information technology were, despite decades of concerted effort, in their infancy, and something only qualified systems engineers or genius geeks could really do with as they pleased.

Fast forward to present day - we're in an age of powerful, user-friendly computer systems, capable of operating as the control centers for countless technologies. Recording and storing media no longer requires the use of countless VHS tapes, a fact that's made the acts of detecting and recording intruders using a home security camera system far less logistically challenging than they once were. Quite aside from computing have conquered the problems of information storage, infrared security cameras have conquered the issue of lighting, making it possible to effectively cover gloomy parts of the exterior and interior of your home with stunning acuity. Indeed, you can build a fully working DIY home security system from cheap components, such as webcams, PIR detectors and contact sensors, which you can pick up at computer and hardware stores for relatively low prices.

You should keep in mind, before you get too caught up in building a DIY home security system that turns your home into a hi-tech fortress, that the most effective form of crime prevention is really simple common sense. More than half of all burglaries occur as the result of negligence - someone leaving a door or window open, or forgetting to put the alarm on. Make sure that your spouse, children, and any other residents of your home are set in the ritual of locking doors whenever they leave, even if it's only to run a quick errand.

Your next move is to have those doors or windows set off the alarm if they are somehow opened when you're not there. Your tool in this regard? Alarm contacts. These magnetic pads, one of which is secured to the door or window and the other to its frame, create a circuit that gets tripped when broken. When the circuit gets tripped, it will emit a signal to the central alarm system hub to which the contacts are tuned. Contacts are cheap - you can buy them for under ten dollars at just about any hardware store - making them ideal for creating a good DIY home security system.

If you've decided to rig up a full-fledge home security camera system as part of your DIY effort, you could arrange your contacts in such a way that they'll activate your security cameras, setting them to record as soon as the circuit is broken. For DIY home security systems, there's no reason to get anything more sophisticated than a webcam to act as your security camera. These can be had for under $20, and are widely available in department stores and through computer supply chains.

Going infrared, by contrast, can be a very costly business. While the cameras are down from their 1970s pricing (which had them at around fifty thousand adjusted US dollars) those available from FLIR, the pioneering infrared security camera company, still bottom out at the, some might say, prohibitive price of $2000. The benefits of infrared security cameras are, however, definitely not something to be sniffed at. They can record detailed, high quality footage even in complete darkness. This they do by the use of microbolometers, which read off the black body radiation of objects (which, relating to heat, is something humans and animals have a lot more of than, say, furniture or walls). Integrating infrared security cameras into your DIY home security system would also eliminate the need for smoke sensors and, by rendering your home security camera system immune from changes in atmospheric conditions, bring it firmly into the 21st century.

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