Innov8av installs security camera systems for houses, HOA communities, condominiums and businesses across Irvine: the older villages of Woodbridge, Northwood, University Park and Turtle Rock, the newer villages from Woodbury and Portola Springs to Orchard Hills and the Great Park Neighborhoods, the guard-gated streets of Shady Canyon, the apartment and office towers of the Irvine Business Complex, and the campuses of the Irvine Spectrum. We are a Los Angeles-based contractor, licensed California C-10 (CSLB #1043428) and BSIS ACO 7755, serving all of Orange County: our own technicians, same-day response, a 1-year parts-and-labor warranty, and most 4–8 camera homes finished in one day. Se habla español.
Irvine is a city of master-planned villages, and that shapes every camera job. Nearly every house, condominium and townhome sits inside an association with an architectural review committee, often a master association over the village plus a sub-association for the tract, and most CC&Rs treat a camera on an exterior wall as an exterior modification that wants a drawing and an approval first. We produce that one-page placement drawing with every proposal, because the approval is usually slower than the install.
The older villages are the easier cable runs. University Park, Turtle Rock, Woodbridge with its two lakes, Northwood and Westpark were built from the late 1960s through the 1990s, with attics, mature trees, greenbelts and, in Turtle Rock and Shady Canyon, back fences that meet open space. Cat6 runs through the attic to a recorder in a closet and every camera is powered over that cable (PoE). The villages built since the 2000s are a different job: Quail Hill, Turtle Ridge, Woodbury, Portola Springs, Stonegate, Cypress Village, Eastwood, Orchard Hills and the Great Park Neighborhoods, which opened in 2013, are two-story stucco houses and detached condos on tight lots with tile roofs, second-story eaves, motor courts and, often, no attic access over the garage. Those runs are longer, sometimes in conduit, and the neighbor's window is twenty feet away.
More than half of Irvine's households rent, by the 2024 census estimates, most of them in large apartment communities and in the towers of the Irvine Business Complex near John Wayne Airport, Orange County's largest employment center, where offices, industrial buildings and apartment towers share the same blocks. A resident there cannot mount anything outside; the system belongs to the building. Commercially, the Irvine Spectrum Center with its 130-plus stores and restaurants, the office and R&D campuses along Alton Parkway and Barranca Parkway, and the village shopping centers each need face-height entrance cameras, plate capture at the driveway and a recorder nobody can walk off with. Old Town Irvine, the 1887 rail-siding townsite that is California Historical Landmark No. 1004, keeps its 1895 bean shed, 1912 blacksmith shop and 1913 hotel, and anything mounted there has to be reversible.
Police jurisdiction. Irvine has its own police department; headquarters is at 1 Civic Center Plaza (business line (949) 724-7000, non-emergency dispatch (949) 724-7200). Cameras alone need no police permit. The UC Irvine campus is patrolled by the university's own police department.
Alarm permit. Irvine City Council Ordinance 98-15, now Title 4, Division 19 of the municipal code, requires an alarm permit before an alarm system is put into operation. The permit is free, filed online or through the department's alarm coordinator at (949) 724-6467, and takes 7 to 10 business days. Each site gets three false alarms in a rolling 365 days at no charge; the fourth costs $50 for a residence or $100 for a business, the fifth $75 or $150, the sixth $100 or $200, and from the seventh the site goes on the no-response list at $200 or $300 per false alarm. A site without a permit gets one 30-day written warning, then $200 or $300 per false alarm. Panic and robbery silent alarms are always answered. Because it takes over a week, the permit goes into the schedule of any camera-plus-alarm proposal.
HOA architectural review. Every Irvine Company village and every Great Park neighborhood has an architectural review committee. Cameras on the exterior of a house, on a condo building or in a common area are exterior modifications under most CC&Rs; we supply the placement drawing, the camera cut sheets and a note on cable routing and color-matched mounts so the submittal is complete the first time.
Electrical permits. PoE cameras fed from the recorder usually need no building permit. A new 120-volt circuit for the recorder, PoE switch or UPS is permitted electrical work through the City of Irvine's Community Development Department; our C-10 licence covers it, so the same crew does it lawfully.
Hillside villages and open space. Shady Canyon, Turtle Rock, Orchard Hills and Portola Springs border wildland. When the Silverado Fire started in Silverado Canyon on October 26, 2020, more than 90,000 Irvine residents were ordered out, Orchard Hills among the first, and no homes were lost; owners here ask for remote viewing that works during an evacuation, which means a recorder on a UPS and a wired internet path.
Privacy. California's two-party consent rule (Penal Code 632) keeps exterior audio off unless there is a specific reason and signage. Cameras must not look into neighboring windows, onto a neighbor's patio or anywhere people reasonably expect privacy, and stores, offices and restaurants post "video surveillance in use" signage.
House in an older village: Woodbridge, Northwood, University Park, Turtle Rock. One camera low enough to read plates and faces in the driveway and at the curb; the front door and porch for packages; both side gates; and the rear yard. In January 2026 Irvine and Newport Beach detectives arrested three men from the San Fernando Valley tied to an organized residential burglary ring; police described them jumping a fence with backpacks in Shady Canyon on January 10 and then walking into open space behind Turtle Rock homes, where earlier burglaries had happened, and crouching in the bushes before driving off. The rear-facing camera on the fence line and the greenbelt is the one that sees that crew coming.
Two-story house in a newer village or a gated community: Shady Canyon, Orchard Hills, Portola Springs, Woodbury, Great Park. The same positions, plus the second-floor balcony and the slider onto it, which is how crews enter when the ground floor is alarmed. Hard-wired PoE cameras rather than battery Wi-Fi models: in June 2026 Irvine police arrested six people, two adults and four 17-year-olds, tied to a professional burglary crew blamed for more than ten home burglaries across Irvine neighborhoods in a year, and crews of that kind carry Wi-Fi jammers. A camera on a cable keeps working when the Wi-Fi does not; our Wi-Fi jammer page explains why.
Condominium or apartment. Inside the unit and at the resident's own door, if the CC&Rs allow it; the walls, walkways and garage belong to the association. The building-wide system covers the garage gate and drive aisles, the mail and package room, the pool and clubhouse, elevator lobbies and the trash enclosure, with a placement drawing the board can approve.
HOA common areas. The entry monument and gate with a license-plate camera, the pool, the clubhouse and its parking, the tot lot, the trail heads and, in Woodbridge, the lake docks and beach clubs, recorded locally with a 30-day retention target and remote access for the manager.
Office, R&D or industrial building in the Spectrum or the Irvine Business Complex. The lobby and every tenant entry, the loading dock, the parking structure or lot with plate capture at the driveway and the server room door, with NDAA-compliant cameras and recorders where a defense, medical or government customer requires them.
Store or restaurant at the Spectrum Center or a village shopping center. A face-height camera at every public entrance, the register, the patio, the back door and the lot.
The camera placement checklist walks through the same logic room by room; the commercial CCTV page covers multi-site and larger recorder designs.
The ranges below are the installed prices we quote across Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties; Irvine sits inside them. The property decides the number, not a per-camera rate, and your written proposal lists every camera by model number.
| Scope | Installed price | What is included |
|---|---|---|
| 4 cameras, single-family home | $1,500 – $4,500 | Driveway/street, front door, side gate, backyard. Usually one day. |
| 8 cameras, two-story or hillside home | $3,500 – $8,000 | Adds rear fence line, balcony, garage and motor court, second street angle, plate capture. |
| 16 cameras, condo building or HOA common areas | $8,000 – $18,000 | Gates, garage aisles, package room, pool and clubhouse, elevator lobbies, docks; 30-day retention recorder. |
| 8–16 cameras, office, R&D, store or restaurant | $8,000 – $30,000+ | Plate capture at the driveway, dock and lot coverage, larger recorder, optional analytics and NDAA-compliant models. |
What moves the number: camera count, resolution (4 MP versus 4K), license-plate lenses, cabling difficulty (a two-story stucco house with no attic access over the garage costs more than a one-story house with an attic), color-matched mounts an architectural committee asks for, recorder storage for the retention you want, and a UPS if you add one. Monitoring is optional, month-to-month from $24.99 with no contract; the recorder has no mandatory monthly fee. Pay over time through our financing partner PayPal.
Everything below is either verifiable with a public record or a commitment we put in writing on every proposal.
Verify the licences yourself: CSLB License Check and DCA/BSIS search.
Not for the cameras. Two things can require one: connecting them to a monitored alarm, which needs Irvine's free alarm permit under Ordinance 98-15 before the system is put into operation, and a new 120-volt circuit for the recorder, which is permitted electrical work our C-10 licence covers. Your HOA's architectural committee is the third approval, and we prepare that submittal for you.
Yes. Innov8av serves all of Orange County from its Los Angeles office with the same commitments as in LA: same-day response, our own technicians rather than subcontractors, a 1-year parts-and-labor warranty and most 4–8 camera homes finished in one day. Call or text (805) 517-4668 and you reach the people who do the work.
Almost always, once the submittal is right. Every Irvine Company village and every Great Park neighborhood has an architectural review committee, and most treat exterior cameras as a modification. We provide the placement drawing, the camera cut sheets, the mount color and the cable route; cameras stay on your own walls and eaves, aim at your own driveway, doors and yard, and never at a neighbor's window or patio.
Wired cameras, not battery Wi-Fi ones, because organized crews carry Wi-Fi jammers; a rear camera on the fence line and greenbelt, because the January 2026 crew came over a fence and through open space; a plate-reading camera at the driveway and curb; door contacts and glass-break detection on a monitored alarm so a forced door at night gets a response, not just a recording; and continuous recording on a recorder with a UPS. Irvine detectives ask neighbors for footage after every case, and we show you how to export a clip before we leave.
We install and stock Hikvision, Luma, ClareVision, Uniview, DSS, Illumivue, Digital Watchdog, Dahua, Ubiquiti and Verkada, and we quote NDAA-compliant cameras and recorders on request, which defense, medical and government tenants often require. Every camera in your proposal is listed by model number.
All of Irvine (ZIP codes 92602, 92603, 92604, 92606, 92612, 92614, 92617, 92618 and 92620), plus Tustin, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Lake Forest and Laguna Hills next door, and the rest of Orange County. Innov8av also serves all of Los Angeles County and Ventura County.
The next step
Text us a photo of the driveway, the back fence, the garage gate or the lobby. We answer the same day with what we would cover, roughly what it costs, and when we can come look for free. Se habla español.
Free. About 10 minutes. No obligation. English and Spanish. Licensed California ACO 7755 and C-10, insured and bonded since 2016. Check it with the State.