CCTV installation in Belfast, fitted street by street.

Belfast City Council covers a compact, densely built city, and most homes we fit cameras on are terraced or semi-detached with a narrow entry at the side or back rather than a long driveway. A single camera over the front door rarely covers the return entry where a bike or bin store sits out of sight, so we usually recommend a second camera angled down the side passage too.

In the newer apartment blocks going up along the river and around the Titanic Quarter, the ask is different again. Communal entrances, car parks and bin stores need coverage that a management company or a residents' group can share, with individual units sometimes wanting their own camera on a balcony or a front door within a shared building. We work with landlords and management committees on these jobs as often as we work with a single homeowner.

Retail units on arterial roads such as the Lisburn Road, the Ormeau Road and the Newtownards Road have their own pattern: a till camera, one covering the stockroom or back door, and one on the shop front recording who comes and goes after closing. Belfast has a high concentration of small independent shops, so a lot of these jobs are upgrades, swapping an old analogue system for 4K without moving the existing cabling.

• Front and side-entry cameras for terraced and semi-detached streets
• Communal entrance and car park coverage for apartment blocks
• Till, stockroom and rear-door cameras for shop units
• 4K upgrades that reuse existing cable runs where they are sound

Belfast sits on the Lagan and Belfast Lough, with the M1, M2 and M3 carrying traffic in and out of the city and the docks and harbour estate forming a large working area on the eastern side. We regularly fit cameras on commercial units and yards close to the harbour, where the priority is usually a wide-angle camera covering a gate or a loading bay rather than fine facial detail.

Away from the centre, streets running towards Cave Hill and Black Mountain sit higher and further from a power point in some older properties, so we plan cable runs at the survey rather than assume a straightforward job. Whatever part of the city you are in, policing here falls under the PSNI's Belfast district, and a clear, well-positioned recording is one of the most useful things you can hand over if an incident is reported.

Your own street decides the detail, though these are the setups we come back to most often across Belfast.