I'm pondering replacing our current home security system (an old-school Honeywell thing that uses the phone line to call up an old-school monitoring company) with a new Internet-of-Things sort of thing. The top contenders seem to be DropCam (which might play nice with the Nest thermostats we have already) and ScoutAlarm (which doesn't do cameras, yet, but does traditional motion sensors, door alarms, and even has keyfobs that you touch to a sensor you put near the door). ScoutAlarm also offers traditional "24/7 monitoring" wherein a human will call the local police, and has cellular backup built-in, if a thief were to cut your traditional Internet connection.

Questions:
- Anybody have either of these things or something else?

- What's the minimum bar to get the appropriate discount rate from your home insurance company? Do they grok these new things?

- I'm attracted by the idea of video cameras, like DropCam, where I can resolve a "false alarm" by pulling up an app on my phone and looking through the camera. I could even then call the police myself rather than having a monitoring service. On the other hand, there's the Orwellian creepy factor of having cameras inside my house.

- These IoT devices always raise the issue of "what if they're hacked?". Since DropCam is associated with Google, I have at least modest confidence that their internal security people are doing audits. With any other vendor, it's hard to say.

- If I did go with DropCam, then I'd presumably want to set up a cellular backup for my wired Internet. I could then just buy another line on our T-Mobile family plan and get a MiFi-like device of some sort, but then I'll need a more interesting home router than the Apple Airport Extreme I'm using now. (Plus, more monthly fees!) Anybody done anything like this?