Most people think about home security after something goes wrong — a break-in on the street, a neighbour’s car broken into, a water leak discovered on returning from a trip. The smarter approach is to think about it the way you would any other operational system: identify the risks, layer the protection, and make sure everything works together rather than as a collection of independent devices that may or may not cover what actually matters.
This guide walks through a complete home security setup — from the garden to the ceiling — with specific device recommendations for each zone and the logic behind each placement decision.
The central hub: start here
Before placing a single sensor, the hub needs to be in place. The hub is the brain of the system — it connects every device, manages alerts, and communicates with your phone and, if connected, a professional monitoring centre.
Ajax’s Hub 2 Plus is the right starting point for most homes. It supports up to 200 connected devices, maintains simultaneous connections over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and two cellular channels — meaning a broadband outage does not take the system offline — and runs on a backup battery for up to 15 hours. Place it in a central location: a hallway cupboard, a utility shelf, or anywhere it has a power outlet and strong signal reach to the rest of the property.
Everything below connects to this hub wirelessly. No cabling, no drilling between rooms.
Outside: the garden and perimeter
The perimeter is where protection needs to begin. An intruder detected in the garden has not yet reached the house — which gives considerably more time to respond than one detected inside it.
MotionCam Outdoor handles exterior motion detection with a capability that sets it apart from standard outdoor sensors: it takes a series of photos the moment it detects movement and sends them to your phone within seconds. Instead of a generic “motion detected outside” notification, you see what triggered it. A person approaching the rear of the property at midnight looks different from a neighbour’s dog wandering in. The detection range reaches 15 metres, the wireless communication range up to 1,700 metres, and the weatherproof housing handles outdoor conditions year-round. Mount it at 2.5–3 metres, angled toward the zone you need to cover.
StreetSiren provides the outdoor deterrent layer — a visible, loud siren positioned at the front of the property. Its presence alone changes the risk calculation for anyone considering the property as a target.
Entry points: doors and windows
Every door and accessible window is a potential entry point. This is where sensor coverage matters most and where gaps are easiest to miss.
DoorProtect is a magnetic opening sensor — one part on the fixed frame, one on the moving door — that detects the moment any gap appears. Installation takes minutes: two screws or adhesive pads, no tools beyond a screwdriver. Battery life reaches up to 7 years. Place one on the front door, the back door, any side entrance, and the door between the garage and the house if there is one. The garage connection is the most commonly overlooked entry point in residential security setups.
For ground-floor windows and glazed surfaces that could be broken rather than opened, GlassProtect adds a second layer. It identifies the acoustic signature of breaking glass using a dual-frequency algorithm — distinguishing it from background noise — and one device covers multiple windows within a 9-metre radius. Mount it on the ceiling or wall facing the glass.
Inside: living areas and hallways
Interior coverage catches anything that has made it past the perimeter. The goal is to cover the main movement paths through the property without leaving zones where someone could move undetected.
MotionCam is the indoor equivalent of the outdoor detector: motion detection at up to 12 metres combined with an integrated camera that activates on trigger. When something trips the sensor, a photo series arrives on your phone within seconds. Pet immunity up to 20 kg means cats and most dogs do not generate constant false alerts. Mount it in the upper corner of the main living room or at one end of the hallway, angled to cover the direction of movement rather than a blank wall.
For entrepreneurs running a home office with sensitive equipment — laptops, external drives, client documents — a second MotionCam covering the office specifically is worth the addition. The event log records every trigger with a timestamp, which matters if something is ever disputed.
Fire and environmental protection
The most financially damaging incidents in homes are not always break-ins. A fire, a pipe that bursts while you are travelling, a boiler fault that goes unnoticed for three days — these are the events that cause the most expensive damage and that a security system covering only intrusion will miss entirely.
FireProtect 2 (Heat/Smoke/CO) detects smoke, heat rise, and carbon monoxide simultaneously. It connects to the same hub as every intrusion sensor, so a fire event generates the same immediate notification to your phone as a triggered door contact. Mount it on the ceiling in the hallway for the widest early-warning coverage. Up to 7 years of battery life on standard replaceable batteries.
LeakProtect lies flat on the floor near water sources — no mounting required — and triggers the moment moisture reaches its contacts. One sensor under the kitchen sink, one near the washing machine, one in the bathroom. For anyone who travels frequently, this is the sensor that pays for itself earliest: a slow leak under a kitchen unit, undetected for a week, causes a different scale of damage from one caught within minutes.
Video surveillance
Cameras add visual context that sensors alone cannot provide: the ability to see what is happening, not just that something is happening.
Ajax cameras — the DomeCam Mini for indoor use and the BulletCam for outdoor — connect directly to the hub and appear in the same app as every other device. When a MotionCam detector triggers, you can switch from the verification photos to a live camera feed from the same interface. There is no separate CCTV app, no second login, no platform switching. Local SD card storage and cloud recording are both supported, with remote access available from anywhere.
The complete setup
A fully covered home using this layout — Hub 2 Plus as the control centre, MotionCam Outdoor covering the garden, StreetSiren at the front, DoorProtect on every entry point, GlassProtect on ground-floor windows, MotionCam in the main living area and home office, FireProtect 2 on the ceiling, LeakProtect near all water connections, and cameras at the main entrance — covers every significant risk category: intrusion, fire, flooding, and remote visibility.
The entire system is wireless. Everything installs without cabling. Everything is managed from one application. And every alert — whether a door opened while you are at a client meeting, a smoke detector activated while you are travelling, or a leak sensor triggered at 3am — arrives through the same notification pipeline, at the same speed, with the same urgency.
For anyone running a home-based business or managing a property while frequently away, that combination of comprehensive coverage and remote awareness is not a luxury addition to the home. It is the baseline that makes being away without worrying about what is happening there actually possible.
The full home security ecosystem covers everything described above and can be expanded as the property or the risk profile changes — one device at a time, without touching the existing installation.
