I've taken some baby steps towards DIY monitoring. I got an Arlo with 4 cameras at half price (I see no reason to get the Arlo 2, the only real difference is higher camera resolution but the resolution is fine on these). They're wireless but the battery lasts a few months, and free cloud video storage for a week. I've got it set up to be armed when either both my phone and my wife's are away from the house, or at night. Sometimes get some "false alarms" from motion detected when the light changes, but overall seems to work fairly well.
Also got a Nest Hello on sale, I thought about the Ring but some people have complained about cold weather performance plus I have Google Home and thought Nest would integrate better. In addition to the camera it sends a message to our Google Home devices when rung, so no more not hearing the doorbell when I'm in the basement. The only thing I didn't like about it is you need at least a basic subscription to have any video storage at all.
I still have an old-school security system, next on my list is to check what discount the insurance company gives me for having it monitored vs. my monitoring cost, I'm pretty sure for the value I get from monitoring I should just cancel and look to eventually replace it with DIY sensors on doors and windows. Also looking at getting at least one smart lock that I can open remotely if the kids forget their keys or otherwise need to let someone in.
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