The best home security system is the one that still works the way you expected in year five. Almost every buying regret in this category comes from the same place: a decision that looked fine at install and changed afterwards — a fee that went up, a feature that moved behind a paywall, footage that turned out to live somewhere you did not choose.
Six questions surface all of that before you sign. Ask them of every company you are considering, including us.
1. Where does the AI actually run?
Every modern system advertises AI detection. Almost none of them tell you plainly where that processing happens, and it is the decision everything else follows from.
Cloud processing means your camera uploads video to a company's servers, their hardware analyses it, and a result comes back. Which means your footage exists on someone else's infrastructure, by design and continuously — not as an accident.
Local processing means the analysis happens on hardware in your house. The video never leaves the building unless you send it somewhere.
This is not a privacy abstraction. It decides what happens during an internet outage, what a company can do with your recordings, who at that company can view them, and what you are exposed to if they are breached.
NoBreak runs entirely locally: a compact Beelink EQR6 — the Brain Box — sits in your utility room running two dedicated AI models, one for security analysis and one for home automation, alongside Frigate NVR and Home Assistant. Zero cloud uploads.
2. What happens when the internet drops?
Ask this one directly and listen carefully to the answer.
A cloud-dependent camera loses its analysis pipeline the moment the connection goes — and many lose recording too, because the recording target was the cloud. Which is a genuine problem, because an outage is not a random event. It correlates with storms, with power cuts, and with someone deliberately cutting a line.
Because NoBreak's AI and storage are both in the house, an upstream outage changes nothing about detection or recording. Internet is used to push notifications to your phone, and that path can route over cellular backup.
3. Do you have to pay monthly to use what you bought?
There are two different monthly fees in this industry and they get deliberately blurred.
- Monitoring — a staffed centre that responds to alarms. That is a real ongoing service and it is reasonable to pay for.
- Feature and storage subscriptions — paying every month to keep recordings you made, or to unlock detection features in hardware you already own. That is rent on your own equipment.
The second kind is worth scrutinising hard, because the total is larger than it looks. Ten to sixty dollars a month across a decade is real money, and the fee is set by someone who knows switching is painful.
NoBreak is a one-time purchase — $1,499 Starter, $2,499 Professional, $4,499 Elite, hardware and installation included. AI detection, alerts and recording all run locally at no monthly cost, because there is no server bill for us to pass on to you. Professional monitoring is coming as an optional add-on; the system is fully functional without it and always will be.
4. Who can look at your footage?
Not "is it encrypted" — who can look at it.
The question worth asking any cloud provider is whether their own staff can access customer video, under what process, and what happens to that footage in response to a legal request. There is a documented industry history of employee access to customer recordings, and it is a structural risk rather than a character flaw: if footage sits on a company's servers, someone at that company necessarily has a path to it.
Local storage removes the question rather than answering it. If the video never leaves your house, there is no staff access policy to trust, no cross-border transfer to think about, and no third party to serve with a request instead of you.
NoBreak footage stays on your Brain Box, end-to-end encrypted, and remote viewing runs over a private encrypted tunnel to your own hardware rather than through a company's servers.
5. What happens if the company disappears?
Ask what your system does the day the vendor is acquired, pivots, or shuts down.
If the AI, the storage and the app all depend on someone's servers, the honest answer is that the hardware becomes decorative. This has happened repeatedly across the smart-home industry, and buyers essentially never ask about it in advance.
A locally-processed system degrades far more gracefully, because the parts doing the work are in your building. NoBreak is built on Frigate NVR and Home Assistant — both established open platforms with large independent communities — so the foundation your system runs on is not a private format only we can open.
6. Will it work with what you already own?
You may not need to replace everything, and any company that says otherwise before looking is selling hardware rather than solving your problem.
NoBreak works with most ONVIF IP cameras, Zigbee sensors, Z-Wave sensors and WiFi devices. If you already have equipment we assess it during a free pre-install consultation — a good amount of it works.
One honest exception worth knowing before you buy anything: battery doorbell-style cameras from the major cloud brands generally do not integrate well into a local system. We have attempted this. Ring in particular exposes no reliable continuous stream — bridging it yields event-triggered clips only, and it drains the battery doing it. If continuous local recording matters to you, a wired PoE camera is the answer and the cheap ones are genuinely fine.
The comparison, plainly
| Cloud subscription systems | NoBreak | |
|---|---|---|
| AI processing | Their servers | Your home |
| Monthly fee | Typically required | Optional only |
| Footage stored off-premises | Yes | Never |
| During an internet outage | Limited or none | Full function |
| Hardware ownership | Partial to full | Fully yours |
| End-to-end encryption | Varies | Yes |
What we are honest about
Two things, because a page that lists only advantages is not a buying guide.
Local storage means a drive to replace eventually. Every drive fails eventually; ours are no exception. It is a scheduled maintenance item rather than a surprise, and we handle it — but it is real and you should know it exists.
Professional monitoring is not live yet. It is coming as an optional add-on. If a staffed monitoring centre is a hard requirement for you today, say so on the call and we will tell you straight rather than sell you a plan around a date.
Where to start
We install a small number of homes at a time, personally, one visit each — so the first step is a conversation rather than a cart.
Book a free 15-minute call and we will assess your home, tell you which of your existing equipment works, and recommend the right setup. Toronto and the GTA. No pressure and no commitment.
Frequently asked questions
What should I look for in a home security system? Where the AI processes footage, what happens during an internet outage, whether monthly fees are required to use features you bought, who at the company can view your recordings, what happens if the vendor shuts down, and whether it works with equipment you already own.
Do I need a monthly subscription for home security? Not necessarily. Monitoring by a staffed centre is a genuine ongoing service, but paying monthly to store your own footage or unlock features in hardware you own is rent on your own equipment. NoBreak is a one-time purchase with no required fees.
Who can see my security camera footage? With cloud systems, that depends on the provider's internal access policy and their response to legal requests. With a locally-processed system the question does not arise — NoBreak footage stays on hardware in your home, encrypted, and never uploads.
What happens to my system if the security company shuts down? If the AI, storage and app all live on the vendor's servers, the hardware generally stops being useful. NoBreak runs locally on Frigate NVR and Home Assistant, both established open platforms, so the system does not depend on our servers existing.
How much does a NoBreak system cost? $1,499 for Starter, $2,499 for Professional and $4,499 for Elite — one-time, including hardware and professional installation. There is no required monthly fee; optional professional monitoring is coming later.
Will NoBreak work with my existing cameras? Most ONVIF IP cameras, Zigbee sensors, Z-Wave sensors and WiFi devices work. We assess what you have during a free pre-install consultation. Battery cameras from the major cloud brands are the common exception — they do not offer reliable continuous local streaming.