Situations
An empty house announces itself with a dark window every evening, a letterbox filling up and parcels on a step — and those three are fixed with timers and boxes rather than with electronics. What the electronics are for is the fortnight itself: knowing an opening moved, seeing who called, and being told about water before it becomes a ceiling.
Two weeks away is the most predictable vulnerability a house has, and the fixes are cheap.
A leak. Twelve days of water from a failed washing machine hose costs more than everything else in this catalogue combined, and a connected sensor is the only product here that would tell you — provided somebody has a key and can reach the stopcock. Arrange that before you rely on it.
A contact sensor on a door reports the moment it starts to move, which is earlier and less ambiguous than a camera noticing somebody already inside. A camera then answers the question the sensor raises.
A single lamp on a timer is a pattern. Two lamps in different rooms, switching at different times, with the second going off later, describes somebody moving through a house. Randomise both, and use plug-in timers rather than anything that needs the broadband to stay up.
A fortnight of post visible through the flap, and parcels on a step, are the clearest signals there are. A larger letterbox and a parcel box remove both, and neither needs power.
Post about the holiday. No product on this site addresses that.
1080p · 360° pan, 130° tilt · 30 m IR · microSD to 512 GB · IP65
The cheapest way into a pan-and-tilt outdoor camera that records to its own card. TP-Link states 1080p, a 360° horizontal sweep and night vision to 30 m, and the listing is unusually frank about what the model is not.
Best for: A first outdoor camera on a wall that already has a socket nearby, where 1080p is enough and the card matters more than the picture.
≈ £33 / 31 €
Only if they are random. A lamp switching at 19:00 exactly, every evening for a fortnight, tells a watcher the house is on a timer and therefore empty. Randomise the time, use two lamps in different rooms, and switch something seen as a glow rather than a fully lit room behind a curtain.
Water. A washing machine hose or a cylinder failing on day two, unnoticed for twelve days, does more damage than any burglary — and a connected leak sensor is the only product here that would tell you.
Cameras, alarm kits and safes swing by thirty euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
