Re: Basic alarm for dummies

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

To put together a purely PC based system, you will need a way of
interfacing
the PIR's 'to the PC, - a digital input board.

There are several of these available, one that I have used, and would
recommend is the VIOM module from www.phaedrusltd.co.uk - 16 inputs, 16
outputs all for £50 inc VAT & delivery.

the boards will typically connect to either a serial or parallel port on
the
PC, - the VIOM above uses a serial port. - I think serial is preferable for
several reasons...

This has a degree of local processing power, so some of the required
responses could be handled by the board itself, and would therefore
continue
when (not if) the Win98 PC crashes...

You will then need some software to process the input from the board. I can
recommend Girder (free) from www.girder.nl, or Homeseer (about £70) from
www.keware.com

So your total setup costs would be either £50 or £120 depending on your
software choice. - But, you'd have to do all the programming yourself, and
this may (depending on your expertise) require a considerable time
investment, so you must weigh that cost as well...

After which, you may actually be better off getting a proper alarm system
and attempting to interface that to a PC. - it doesn't _have_ to be one
designed for PC interfacing (which are usually more expensive) - you could
interface to the LED's on the panel if necessary to give basic status
reporting... (armed, alarm, etc...)

HTH

Paul G.

>From: "Luc Degrande" <luc.degrande@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: [ukha_d] Basic alarm for dummies
>Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 12:58:35 +0100
>
>I had a burglary in my workshop last night and would like
>to install a basic alarm system using PIR's, camera and
>phone dialling.
>There were several discussions about this but what I don't
>understand is how to configure a PC to start a sequence of events
>like start the image recording, dial a number and play a WAV.
>
>I have all hardware required except the camera.
>How can this be done on a normal PC running WIN98.
>Is there info available on similar setup's?
>
>Note: I don't want to install a regular (expensive) alarm, we will only
>stay here for another 2 years, so this would be wasted money.
>
>Thanks,
>Luc.
>




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