Gator

My priority is to obtain an early warning of intrusion onto the property when we are home. I already have a wired alarm with every door and window wired. That has passive IR in the front and glass break detectors in the back. The wired alarm is not much use because at best police response time would be twenty minutes after the fact.

The more recent threat is in the form of home invasions. In other communities, they enter when they believe people will be home, because the motive is a robbery inside the home rather than burglary when people are at work. Because it is gang activity, there are often violent consequences. Some of these are in broad daylight. They typically involve multiple perpetrators.

My goal is to harden my home security to make it an unattractive target compared with other less protected homes. I think a system that turns on more exterior lighting in response to intrustion on the property while alerting us of the threat would help quite a bit. Of course daytime lighting wouldn't be of any help. Obvious video cameras may be some deterent.

Sounding alarms once the home is entered is way too late. That won't stop a crime in progress. An alarm wouldn't stop a home invasion once it's started, regardless of how loud it is. An alarm sounded when the property line is crossed might deter somewhat. That would need to be a panic button arrangement because false alarms would otherwise be daily from wildlife.

Sounding alarms based on any sort of motion detection would be fraught with false alarms because so much wildlife here. Deer make their rounds through the yard every night. They walk right up to the living room window. I'm not too interested in documenting things after the fact. That would require off-site retention of the video, because that gear would likely be stolen long before police could respond. In this rural location, I don't have the internet bandwidth to send much video elsewhere.

The homes on this street are on five acres each. The land behind me is more than a hundred acres. Lighting is poor on the street with one lamp every 300 yards or so. In the last couple of years the county contructed a jail three miles away. A new community of homes was constructed near the jail in that vicinity. Those visiting friends in jail ride out here afterwards to see what they can get into. On the plus side, I have 150 to 400 foot of clear open space on all sides to my property lines. Warning of those lines being crossed would provide some time to prepare, lock family into a safe room, etc.

Wolf, you are right about a permiter alarm. I really need intrusion alert when someone sets foot on the property, not once they have arrived at the doors or windows. The problem is the cost and the cable installation. I looked at this approach first for several days last week. I didn't find any wireless photoelectric gear. I would have to install a lot of buried wiring and run many of the very best photoelectric beams. The boundries to be monitored are 350' for the shortest one and 750' for the longest. The ground isn't flat, so it would require more than four beams to be sure an intruder didn't pass beneath the beam. We're looking at over half a mile of trenched cable to do that.

When you say it would be asking a lot from bullets for that range, are you talking about the 400 foot distance? I am really only contemplating the bullets for the front and rear doors. Is the KPC-S190SWX bullet adequate for those two locations? Those locations would be lighted at night.

The more worrysome direction is the major roadway on the South property line along the side roadway. My concern is that an accomplice could drop people off at that roadside where they would walk onto the property in seclusion. There's traffic along that street, so a camera used to monitor that South boundry needs to be reasonably free from headlight glare issues, but it needs to be able to produce usable detection video with floodlighting. The Genwac isn't really good in that regard. Headlights appear like highway flares and somewhat fog the frames. This application is the camera I need advice selecting. I planned on mounting it outdoors in an enclosure, so a box camera would be just fine. I don't want to overspend on this. But spending too little and not solving the problem is worse.

We had some vandalism recently, so have decided to step up home security. There have been some home invasions closer by as well. Now that I have a new Mossberg at hand, it's time to set up to a proper early warning system.

The most important feature of the video warning system is to provide early alert of approaching threats. Low false alarm rate is important. There will be too many false alarms from wildlife as it is.

Seeing recoginizable faces is less important than getting early warning with low false alarms. They will be identifiable if they ever enter our home later on.

Four or five years ago, I bought a Genwac 1/2" 902H Camera when someone else was casing the neighborhood. I used Gotcha video capture and a winnov A/V board for the dedictated PC system. It sort of met the requirement. I tried a super HAD from Supercircuits before buying the 902H. The PC-1xx (I forget the exact model now) HAD was pretty disappointing, so I sent it back. It looked like broad black crayon raster instead of an image. My capture software couldn't deal with that much noise.

The Genwac 902H is fuzzy but may be adequate ito cover one direction with 300 watts of lighting. I need something similar in another direction. I have two intersecting roads where intruders would likely enter, so that is where I want to focus my design. I'll be replacing the winnov single channel board with an Aver NV3000 four channel card. I expect to cover the front and rear doors with some sort of low light bullet cams lighted with motion detecting lights. I would like those adequate for recognizing faces, but they can be properly lighted.

The front will be covered with my 902H. I need another camera that will cover the side yard. Trespass would likely be from 400 foot distance with about 200 foot of property line.

I'm looking for advice on camera selection for the second low light camera and also for bullet cameras for the front and rear doors. I was considering the the KPC-S190SWX for the two bullets at the doors. I read a post here that the 190 kind of disappointed (didn't seem to really have super HAD performance). I really can't chose what to use for the long range camera facing the side either. I would prefer not to box up an indoor camera, but I have room if that's necessary. I will add some exterior lighting. I think lighting will be somewhat detering, in that it will encourage problems to visit neighbors first instead of starting here. Lighting seems essential, even with the Genwac 902H, so I've given up on covert detection.

I used X-10 devices in the past while out of town two months to run lighting and window blinds on a random schedule. I plan to bring them back out of storage and set them up again. I would like for the NV3000 card to send lighting commands to X-10 lighting modules. But it's been five years since I fooled with visual basic. Has anyone here used the Aver cards to send lighting commands via X-10? I know they have added a card that triggers commands on relay contacts.

I'm still reading the NV3000 manual while I wait for the card to arrive. I think I need their audio board to get relay contact outputs. That would waste the last precious PCI slot that could be better used for more cameras later on. What data is offered on the undocumented header pins? Can the NV3000 software launch a brief aplication that sends lighting commands to X-10?

Larry