Dear ALL,

Hoping you can offer some constructive advice, direction as I am looking for a DIY alarm system or an alarm installer that does not charge like a wounded bull.

I do not want a reporting back to base system, that ties me in to a contract with a monitoring firm.

I would like a camera based system that will text or email me with any alarm incidents.
We also have two dogs that can be anywhere in the house in the evening / night.
During the day time they will be in the laundry.

Thanks

why bother with an alarm , all your neighbours will do when it goes off is call you a W#nker and not pay attention . You have two dogs , they are a more effective alarm .

if you want security get some cameras with decent IR .

dusta,

You have not met my dogs, one would sleep through any event whilst the other would be cowering somewhere.
They are not exactly guard dogs, actually there is more risk of the dogs being nicked than them being any use.

Re the noise I agree and that is why I want something that will report back to my mobile

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KEAW YED said..
dusta,

You have not met my dogs, one would sleep through any event whilst the other would be cowering somewhere.
They are not exactly guard dogs, actually there is more risk of the dogs being nicked than them being any use.

Re the noise I agree and that is why I want something that will report back to my mobile

haha oh you have one of 'those' guard dogs .

Set up web cams in each room, yard, driveway, poodle kennel, car etc then set up a link to the interweb, post the link on seebrzzzzz with your mobile number.

That way we can txt you a score on how hot we think your missus is....
And let you know where the dog poos are.

I've put in a couple of swan systems, there alright far as quality goes and pretty easy to install and set up. If your tool and computer savvy you should be ok. Most of them are quad six cable or cat 6 cable. Depending on which one you get you may need a sparky to supply the cams with power ( usually the quad 6 ones ). Heaps of other systems available out there

HJi Have been in the Security Industry about 25 years, I dont see much value in a Alarm system either back to base or not.
My suggestion is that you install Security lights, cheap and effective, .
A cheap Alarm system will only cause you more problems, back to base are a wast of money, what do they do thats effective.
Ask your self what do you need a Security System and will it DO what you want it to ??
Just my thoughts

PS Security Signs on windows etc work and are cheap

PS Remember that your dogs will set off MOST alarm systems

get a third dog, a big one....

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Lexmark said.. I dont see much value in a Alarm system either back to base or not.

I'd disagree. Got broken into 3 times in 2 years. (A public walkway over my back fence made my house an easy target.) Installed a reasonable alarm, and had no break-ins for the following 20 years.

Visible deterrent is the most important bit. Give them a good reason to move onto someone else's house. Therefore:

1. Make sure the flashing light and alarm box are very visible.
2. Make sure the back-lit keypad can be clearly seen from the front door.

Then again, you could get the same effect just by installing an alarm box and strobe light. Although I like that my kids can come home from school, and know there is no-one in the house because the alarm is armed.

I have also been in the intruder detection, CCTV and associated industry for commercial buildings for most of my working life.

the problem with DYI systems are they are a compromise at best. A system installed by a good professional will be selected and designed to provide good trouble free coverage. A zoned system with occupied and unoccupied modes will have reed switch perimeter detection and motion sensors that will allow for the perimeter to be armed while you and you pets roam around inside. I totally agree with the visible siren, strobe and stickers.

I am not convinced of the virtues of home CCTV cameras without an associated intruder alarm system unless you are happy to watch videos of your stuff being taken by some bloke in a hoody. Be very careful of the placement of external CCTV camera, they should not be placed where they look into neighbours properties. If you are not careful you will antagonise the neighbours making them think you are prying when the best security is having them onside...

PS... I have had a good home security system in every house I have lived in, successfully stopped 1 break in and never a false alarm not even when left armed for extended 5 weeks periods while overseas.

There is some good advice here. I have both an Alarm system and CCTV in my place....I would agree that cheap home installed alarms and visual systems are pretty much novelty value only. If you want it to work, pay to do it properly....and therefore you need to have a really good think about what you want Vs what a system will actually deliver to you. If someone successfully breaks in and trips the alarm...what do you realistically want to happen? The answer will guide what you need.

I have two IR CCTV cameras covering the front of the house. These are clearly visible and made a marked decrease in wayward kid "issues" in the immediate neighborhood when they went in, despite nothing ever being picked up. The power of kids gossip is a great thing...that and the dull red lights they give off at night are very sinister....The police sometimes ask for footage when it has picked up suspects fleeing down the street after local robberies.

Will share some thoughts:

The best security is prevention by deterrence...make sure your house entry points are secure and automatic sensor lights etc are installed. This is the first and best spend you can /should do.
Back to base is useless as you and everyone else has agreed with
Neighbors will react the same as your dogs...so don't rely on an audible alarm. Although I have internal screamers which at least may cut short any robbery attempt.
External visuals are very good deterrents, make sure an alarm box and strobe and maybe some cameras are visible....working or not.
If you get an alarm, do it properly and get a professional to install an industry recognised one. I recommend Bosch, but there are others in that league. Learn how to program it yourself. Test it regularly.

Frankly the best use my system has had is the internal motion sensors providing a nice dull light to see by when I move around the house at 3am...and my kids love to play 5 nights at freddy's with the cctv system...:P Plus...internal cameras are great at getting the truth out of your kids....saying you will check the cameras will get kids backpedaling faster than a politician on breakfast radio...they have never worked out the internals are only on at night...

I have a perimeter alarm around my house, I want to know if someone is breaking in when I am at home to be able to get the (12 gauge) baseball bat out in time. It is working well and had only little false alarms mainly caused by the next door cat.

^^ i hope you had a chance to test the (12 gauge) baseball bat out on those little false alarms !!

Hi,
Yes all true, but again you need to ask what do you want a security system for, what do you want it to do?? ! Security systems them selves, wont stop a break and enter.
Unless you want to go that way, I would suggest things like, signs, security lights, making sure your house is visable from the road, ie not too much bush, trees ete, good doors and locks also on windows

Thanks for all the replies, very much appreciated.

Home security is a tough one. In my mind you want a layered system, ideally an increased physical barrier like clear mesh screens, a decent alarm and cameras. At the end of the day the cockroaches are inherently lazy, make it too hard and they will go elsewhere.

I'd take a punt that more houses get broken into with alarms and cctv than those with just security screens all round.

I'd also punt that the most likely window to get smashed is actually the fixed panel on glass sliding doors. They're disgustingly easy and quiet to breech. Security screens won't help you there but they will help prevent all those summer burgs where doors and windows are left open for the sea breeze.

Im running a full swan professional setup have ptz cameras and all that motion detection The alarm is alerted as you drag the box over your motion detection areas. I don't install this **** but Its a good setup the a cameras are 12v and I think if your not running ptz cameras and cat 5 You don't need to pay a Muppet to install this stuff.
bUY a swan 8 camera recorder a with 4 cameras and grow on it .
I will add that the insurance company im with And others will not lower my premiums for installing such equipment. They couldn't care less. ?????????????????????????????????
So if I make an insurance claim I will only hand over the footage to the police . Insurance company can go **** itself.
Just remember and insurance company is a business At the end of the day they really couldn't give a **** about you !

I had a constant problem with deer in the yard after dark making a mess of the landscaping, so I installed security/motion lights thinking the lights would scare them away, wrong! It just made it easier for them to see the plants.
Then I took one of the security light bulbs out, and replaced it with one of those screw in electrical outlets. I ran an extension cord from that plug to an electrical sprinkling system valve for the yard. Now whenever a deer, or anything, or anybody sets off the motion detector, not only do the lights come on, but the sprinklers come on as well. The deer don't like getting wet if there is a choice, so they no longer bother with my yard during the night.
Would it be worth getting wet to burgle a house? Maybe not.

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busterwa said..
Im running a full swan professional setup have ptz cameras and all that motion detection The alarm is alerted as you drag the box over your motion detection areas. I don't install this **** but Its a good setup the a cameras are 12v and I think if your not running ptz cameras and cat 5 You don't need to pay a Muppet to install this stuff.
bUY a swan 8 camera recorder a with 4 cameras and grow on it .
I will add that the insurance company im with And others will not lower my premiums for installing such equipment. They couldn't care less. ?????????????????????????????????
So if I make an insurance claim I will only hand over the footage to the police . Insurance company can go **** itself.
Just remember and insurance company is a business At the end of the day they really couldn't give a **** about you !

While installation is not difficult, advice from the right Muppet ensures you have the right type of detectors installed in the right locations and set up correctly to provide the best coverage, sensor triggering, no false alarming, zoning, etc. a lot of the DYI systems either don't have all the features or are desensitised to reduce false alarms. The worst thing you can do is install a system that constantly false alarms.

In Victoria at least some insurance companies provide a discount for an alarm system, some require it to be professionally installed and back to base. They also provide discount for locks on windows.

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mazdon said..
^^ i hope you had a chance to test the (12 gauge) baseball bat out on those little false alarms !!

Not Really............. I like cats! Would not shoot animals, maybe some animals standing on 2 feet? and they are not apes1

System installed before we moved in.
Its been pretty good, only had a few false alarms over the years. Mostly our fault:
Big arse huntsman running across the PIR. (Now spray around them with fly spray every now and then)
Left AC running while we went out for an hour or so in summer, kids mobile hanging from roof set it off.
Our robotic vacuum (Mo) decided to finish off the job he started and we'd left a door open. (Had excluded the room he was in)
and one that wasn't, failed PIR kept setting it off.

No need for the back to base or mobile calling etc - our neighbour rings us up after he's had a look around
I can check the cams over the net as well.


We have used the cams at work to send to police for a fatal car accident on the street.



Wishes:
I would like to be able to remotely disable/silence it over the net. (This model doesn't support it)

For DIY cost effective cameras I've looked at hikvision. Check them on ebay, $100 for a HD dome camera with night vision, $400 for a NVR and some hard drives. Get the POE model and just run cat 6 cables yourself. The free software allows phone connectivity, setting up rules for emailed photos when movement in zones etc.

Night vision / infrared is often a waste of money for home security CCTV at night. It will show you where the crook was and what they did but I've yet to see a home system that will help identify them. Wire in a decent sensor light at the same time and allow the camera to record in higher def in the visible light spectrum for your best chance of recording something decent.

Not all installers are experts either, I was chatting to an installer the other day who was quite chuffed with the placement of his cameras at a local business until we looked at the recorded footage after the place was broken into and found three of the four cameras were useless at night and the fourth only worked well because of the lighting from a bar fridge nearby.

Wire all the door handles and aluminium window frames to the red wire in your switch box. Just make sure that you wire it in before the Safety switch. Also you will need to insulate your aluminium windows. The doors should be ok if they are hung in timber.

So, You need a good home security system ,right?
Actually, the trend in home security system has changed a lot. Now we can monitor our home from aboard a spaceship if you wanted to. In fact, we can not only monitor or protect our valuables with the help of security cams, we can monitor our children,pets etc also. Moreover, it can be the source of great peace of mind or great financial headache. But there are many factors to consider while buying one. I would recommend taking up professional consultation because if u get it installed by some random people,problems may occur. Check out the reviews. You'll get to know the best in town that way :) .I did the same while installing one in our office. Check them out :) :)

www.toptenreviews.com/best-home-security-systems
www.goodalarmbadalarm.com/
www.homesecuritysystemsreviews.ca/

I installed a NESS system after advice from a friend who has installed quite a few. I have to say after 5 years its been very reliable, never set off a false alarm and the pet friendly sensors work really well. Our dog stays outside usually but I left her in the garage one day because she was freaking about thunder and totally forgot and left her in for the whole day with system armed.
I found installation relatively easy. The diodes on sensors were a little tricky. Hardest part for me was the programming. This is where an experienced installer will help. Took me quite a few hours to get it right.
NESS is quite a bit more expensive than the chinese ebay jobs. I have tried one of those too and it false alarmed quite regularly.

When it comes to buying security cameras there are some important factors that you would have to consider. Image quality is an important factor, the better the image the clearer will be the picture. Cameras with CCD chips generally gives better quality video footage. Some of the other factors that you could consider having is proper lighting conditions so that the camera can easily switch on to day mode and night mode properly. Select cameras that are capable of storing video footage. Here is a blog from protection plus security solution that mentions some tips on how to select a good home security camera protectionplus.ca/facts-often-ignored-installing-security-cameras/ .