Re: Any tips for a consumer about to purchase a system & contract?

["Bob Worthy" <securinc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"accidental plumber" <aplayerinla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1162881189.722417.268380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I would use the army of ants approach, rather than dealing with the
> philosophy of installers.
>
> If you have to use monitoring service, I would suggest use two who
> would accept DIYers, one for $8.95 and one for $11.00 per month.  One
> use land line and one use cell.  Or a wifi phone hooked to your
> neighbor's router.  Or one wifi phone hooked to each neighbor's router
> that you can reach.  Hopefully if you screw up, you don't screw up all
> the lines.
>
> Wired systems are more or less the same.  Window/door contacts and PIRs
> are more or less the same.  If you are not sure, just use more
> redundancy.  Two or three PIR at an area when you can use only one will
> increase the reliability, and the difficult an intruder have to deal
> with.  One PIR outside a window, one inside, a contact sensor, a
> vibration sensor and a audio sensor.
>
> Wireless is a bit different, because some systems like x10 are
> unbelievable stupid.  But you don't have to believe anybody about how
> secure their system is.  Use element of surprise.  Stick the ADT label
> or GE label everywhere but use x10, etc, etc.  Use two systems at
> different RF frequency, so to disarm the intruder have to use two
> different set of equipments and twice the time.  And why DIY systems?
> Nobody knows which brand and how much systems you actually have.
>
> The usual principle is Light, Time, and Noise, to which I would add
> Surprise.  So I wonder if all these internal alarm is necessary if you
> do your outdoors properly.  Keep your perimeter always well lit by
> flood light if you don't mind the electricity bill and the environment.
>  If you mind, maybe dimmer lights plus PIR flood lights.  And then some
> more lights that would turn on for no particular reasons.  That's the
> surprise.
>
> Of course outdoor (and indoor) cameras.  Wired is good but installation
> is a nightmare.  Again use a mix of frequencies, 2.4 GHz, 1.2 GHz, and
> wifi (2.4G).  And also 0, dummies.  Use your company computer for DVR
> function to record your internet cams.  Instead of an expensive $700
> DVR, you can buy about 5 to 7 DVR's.  They are so small that you can
> hang it up next to the cams, or put the cam and DVR inside those
> intimidating dummy housings.  So you turn a smashing game into a
> treasure hunting game.
>
> Nowadays a 20 GB DVR will last several day's continuous footage.  Those
> with much smaller storage often comes with motion detection to save
> memory, and automatic overwriting old images.  So there's little effort
> to maintain several DVR's.  But whether they capture useful images is a
> different story.  But if you don't know, who does?

Stick to plumbing. If you wanta add "surprise" put the cold water on the
left side.
>