Home Security And Alarm Systems

Although my home does have an alarm system installed, it does not include any type of security cameras or any other video capabilities. Some day I would love to upgrade to one of the new high-tech security systems but since that’s not in the budget at the present time, I decided to augment my system with some of my own do-it-yourself additions.

This is by-no-means a comprehensive security solution and there are probably an almost endless number of other additions and improvements that could be made to secure my home, but this is what I have done so far and the big bonus is that it has not cost me a whole lot of money.

It started small. Really small. The one thing I really dislike about my house is that the area that is best suited to serve as my home office (where I spend the majority of my day) offers no view of the front of my property. It’s on a lower level of the house where there are only south-facing windows and doors. It is the rear of my home that faces south, and to make matters worse, the only way to set up my office that makes sense forces me to have my back to the windows and doors that I do have available.

This is something that has irritated me since we have lived here. Our driveway comes into our home from the north and being on the lower level of the home with a lot of earth between myself and my driveway, there was no way for me to see or hear anyone approaching my home unless they were driving a particularly loud vehicle like a heavy truck or something. Each and every time someone would ring my door bell while I was working in my home office, it was a complete surprise to me since I had no way of knowing anyone was on my property. That was not the ideal situation for a security-conscious guy like myself!

One day a very simple idea came to me. I discovered that we still had some old baby monitors that we had used when my kids were small. Considering that my kids are now in their twenties gives you an idea just how long these old baby monitors had been hanging around. I tested them out and they still worked perfectly. I decided that being able to hear someone approaching my home was better than nothing so I took the baby monitor transmitter and placed it on a shelf near the overhead doors in the garage and placed the receiver in my home office. It took a little experimentation to move the transmitter and receiver around a bit and get a good clean signal, but after just a few minutes I had it working quite satisfactorily.

As anyone who has used a baby monitor probably knows, they are quite sensitive. After all, they are designed so that parents can hear their young children if they are in distress or otherwise in need of help. Many of them are sensitive enough to transmit the sound of a baby’s breathing. The old Playskool brand baby monitors I am using are no exception and I can often hear sounds like dogs barking in the distance or cars passing by on the road some 500 or so feet from my house. Our home is situated in a rural area and we have quite a long driveway.

The monitor worked great. If I was working in my office, there was no way a vehicle could approach my home without me hearing it. The same thing applied to anyone on foot who happened to be close to my garage or front door. I could easily hear someone walking out there. The monitor took me from being completely “in the dark” regarding visitors and intruders while working in my home office to being very aware of anyone approaching or intruding on the area in the front of my home. There were no more surprise visitors showing up at my front door. By the time they got there I had already gone upstairs and looked out to see who it was.

A couple of years ago I decided to look into adding video to my rudimentary DIY security system. I discovered that there were a number of security cameras available at online auction sites for about $50. These cameras were advertised as having infrared capability that would allow them to “see” a certain distance even when it is dark outside. I decided to order one to see how it would work out as part of my home office security system. I also ordered about 50 feet of coaxial cable which I would use to connect the camera to a computer in my home office.

Once I received the camera and the cable, I mounted it in the lower part of the attic vent that faces out towards my driveway. Not only was I able to keep the camera sheltered from the weather by having it just inside the attic (although it is advertised as being weather-proof) it also made the camera less obvious to anyone who happened to be in its field of view. Although security cameras are often placed where they can be easily seen and hopefully serve as a deterrent, I take a different approach. Rather than putting the camera where it is easily seen and allowing potential burglars or other intruders know its location, and therefore what area to avoid, I prefer having it somewhat harder to see so that I am more likely to catch an unwitting intruder on camera.

I was able to connect the camera to a spare PC I have in my office so that I can leave it running all day while I am working in my home office. At night I have software running that will record the output of the camera on my PC so I can review it the next morning. Normally I only see the occasional bird, squirrel, turkey or deer crossing my driveway during the early morning hours, but it’s good to know that the camera is “on duty” all night long while we are asleep. It could provide very valuable evidence if we ever wind up being the victims of vandalism or some other crime during the night.

One thing I discovered about the $50 “infrared” security cameras is that their claims about how far they can “see” in the dark are exaggerated. At least that’s the case for the one I bought. Although you can indeed see someone walking by it when it’s dark, the quality of the image is very poor. It’s hard to make out anyone on foot after dark. Vehicles, on the other hand, are a very different story and show up very prominently at night while driving down my driveway towards my home. Although the quality is not quite good enough to make out a license plate, it is quite likely that the make and model of a vehicle could be determined by viewing video from the camera that was shot in the dark.

The program I use to record video can be set up to capture about one frame every second and that is the setting I use. Recording full-motion video would consume enormous amounts of space on my computer’s hard drive, so reducing it to one frame-per-second makes the file sizes much more manageable. I can usually record about 9 hours of video and use about 2 GB of disk space which is not all that bad in this age of inexpensive hard drives that offer a lot of storage capacity.

I’m quite satisfied with my low-cost DIY security system which allows me to both see and hear what’s going on around the front of my home while I am working in my home office. So far I have not caught anyone more sinister than the UPS guy or the utility company meter reader, but it does give me a lot more peace-of-mind knowing it would be nearly impossible for intruders (like someone planning a home invasion!) to approach my home without being seen or heard.

As I mentioned earlier, there are probably many other inexpensive solutions to home security problems that a homeowner can implement on their own. For many people, a professionally-installed security system is not practical or affordable, so think outside the box a bit and see what you might already have around the house that you could employ to improve your home security. I’m sure there are a great variety of inexpensive devices available online or at your local home improvement store that could be used by a do-it-yourself type like me to make your home a much safer place.