Let's talk home security.

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Dbest
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My wife and I are wanting to add a home security system. I travel for work a lot and my wife is here alone with our son, it's piece of mind for me and a better nights sleep for her, she's not of fan of being alone in a big house.

ADT is the first thing that comes to mind but their cost is pretty high, typically $40+ a month while locked into a few years of contract for dated hard wired technology requiring holes in the wall.

I was looking into something like Simplisafe. It's wireless, live monitoring, window and door entry sensors, add what you want, it has its own celluar connection, no contract just small month to month fee, etc. The done side is there's no smart deadbolt locks and no cameras. I'd really like front and back door cams tied in.

Right now for security we basically just have a smart garage door with live monitoring that alerts us when it's opened, solid doors with quality locks, a big ass safe, and a .40 loaded up with hollow points.
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Melon
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I'll definitely be more interested in this thread as my house gets closer to being done.

I'd like a decent system, with door monitors, not too worried about my new fancy windows, and a motion detector is almost useless with 2 cats in the house. Although I may put one in a the living room, which can see both front and back doors for when I'm on vacation and the critters are with the pet sitter.

I've been looking at Honeywell products mainly because I can incorporate the alarm system with my HVAC, and with a FirstAlert 120v hard wired fire alarm I have in the house. I do like the nest better, and the Honeywell Nest copycat doesn't have very good reviews on Amazon. I'd also like to get video for the front entrance, and for the garage.

I've also seen a doorbell system that acts as a video camera, if someone rings your doorbell, it will send a video to your phone, which is super cool.

Of course, if all else fails, there's good ol' Smith & Wesson.
4zilch wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:46 am I'm a fucking failure.
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I had an ADT rep come knocking at my door, I invited him and told him I just wanted to pick his brain.
He then showed me around, and then after about 5 min, he asked me to sign up for a service, something like $250 down and $70 a month.

I told him I needed to think it over, and he gave me some sales pitch shit and started to throw a fit. I told him to :gtfo:
Left a bad taste in my mouth. If I get a panel, and install it myself, I'll pay someone else to monitor it. That's what Dubshow did.
4zilch wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:46 am I'm a fucking failure.
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Dbest
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Unwanted entry and packages left at the door.

The more I research the more SImpliSafe seems like the route to go.
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Acid666
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I need cameras. I wanna be able to spot people possibly stealing packages and rummaging thru our vehicles. They're always locked, and my garage is always shut. There's been a few stolen things in the neighborhood, and several stolen vehicles. They posted it on the local neighborhood site.... fucking idiots left their shit unlocked, and they keys in the car. God damned idiots.
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Dbest
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[user not found] wrote:
Dbest wrote:Unwanted entry and packages left at the door.

The more I research the more SImpliSafe seems like the route to go.
I wouldn't trust my home to simplisafe.

1) their monitoring is subcontracted to the lowest of the low monitoring center
2) their equipment is 25 year old technology


Again, what are you trying to protect against (unauthorized entry isn't a response)?
What's your threat profile?

How many break ins have there been in your neighborhood?
How far are you from the nearest police station?
How easy is it to get in and out of your neighborhood and to a highway?
Where is the closest middle school? Halfway house? Government criminal justice building?
How does your house look from the curb compared to the rest of the neighborhood (richer?)?
How is the concealment from the street to your property?
How well is your property lit?

How is that not a response? I don't want people that shouldn't be in my house in my house.

Break ins in the neighborhood - Zero. Occasionally in the warmer months people will complain that they left their garage door open overnight and someone stole something out of it, or that they parked in the street overnight and didn't lock their doors so someone opened it and went through looking for valuables. I've never heard of anyone have an actual forced entry break in. I live in the type of place where the town complains about the golf course country club having fireworks displays to many times throughout the year and people parking their golf carts to close to the fire hydrants when going to the farmers market.

Police station is 1.5-2 miles away.

Our neighborhood is like a long horse shoe shape with 2 entrances that go to the same road. The inside of the horseshoe is a bunch of side streets, the rounded side of the horse shoe shape has one little street that pokes out. Our street is a dead end that ends at protected open space and our backyard backs to open space. The main road goes straight down about 5 miles of rural to a highway. We have no through traffic and traffic on our street is either neighbors or the occasional person turning around. Quite a bit of foot traffic with people going to the open space since there's paved trails and you can see some of the bike trails on the bottom right of the pic.

Next neighborhood over on the other side of the open space has a middle school, no half way houses, rehab, homeless, or correctional facilities.

Our whole neighborhood was built was in 04-05. The one entrance has a handful of townhouses by the main road, the rest is all newer nicer single family homes. There's a handful of large ranches with basements, but most of the houses are 4-5 bedroom 2-3 car garage 2 floors + basement. Very cookie cutter, nothing stands out one way or another about ours.

No concealment from the street or the open space but the trail that runs behind our house is set back quite a ways from our property. Were considered a semi arid desert, there's not much for trees.

The house is lit up plenty from the inside, outside we don't tend to keep lights on much but we do have street lights. When we do have the front lights on we turn them off before going to bed.
Last edited by Dbest on Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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[user not found] wrote:
Dbest wrote:

How is that not a response? I don't want people that shouldn't be in my house in my house.

Break ins in the neighborhood - Zero. Occasionally in the warmer months people will complain that they left their garage door open overnight and someone stole something out of it, or that they parked in the street overnight and didn't lock their doors so someone opened it and went through looking for valuables. I've never heard of anyone have an actual forced entry break in. I live in the type of place where the town complains about the golf course country club having fireworks displays to many times throughout the year and people parking their golf carts to close to the fire hydrants when going to the farmers market.

Police station is 1.5-2 miles away.

Our neighborhood is like a long horse shoe shape with 2 entrances that go to the same road. The inside of the horseshoe is a bunch of side streets, the rounded side of the horse shoe shape has one little street that pokes out. Our street is a dead end that ends at protected open space and our backyard backs to open space. The main road goes straight down about 5 miles of rural to a highway. We have no through traffic and traffic on our street is either neighbors or the occasional person turning around. Quite a bit of foot traffic with people going to the open space since there's paved trails and you can see some of the bike trails on the bottom right of the pic.
Image

Next neighborhood over on the other side of the open space has a middle school, no half way houses, rehab, homeless, or correctional facilities.

Our whole neighborhood was built was in 04-05. The one entrance has a handful of townhouses by the main road, the rest is all newer nicer single family homes. There's a handful of large ranches with basements, but most of the houses are 4-5 bedroom 2-3 car garage 2 floors + basement. Very cookie cutter, nothing stands out one way or another about ours.

No concealment from the street or the open space but the trail that runs behind our house is set back quite a ways from our property. Were considered a semi arid desert, there's not much for trees.

The house is lit up plenty from the inside, outside we don't tend to keep lights on much but we do have street lights. When we do have the front lights on we turn them off before going to bed.
You have zero need for an alarm system.

At most you need something like Ring.
:dat:

Ring will be great. Camera and mic set up so you can communicate with those who ring the doorbell.
:doughnut: :narc: :doughnut:
Desertbreh wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 3:05 pm DFD. The forum where everybody makes the same choices and then tells anybody trying to join the club that they are the stupidest motherfucker to ever walk the earth.
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Dbest
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I don't think we NEED an alarm either, it's just piece of mind for my wife and I. It's like how most people buy their safe after becoming the victim of some type of theft, we prefer to be proactive. The biggest thing is when I travel for work I'm gone for typically 6 weeks at a time. She's not all that comfortable sleeping in the house alone. Part of the reason we were thinking SimpliSafe is you have the option to just not pay the subscription fee and still use entry sensors with the siren for localized alarm, there's no contract. It would at least make noise and wake her up in the night if someone got in the house. Realistically the alarm going off would likely be enough to scare off an intruder but it would at least wake her up over the white noise sound machine so she could grab the nightstand gun.

What we were thinking was entry sensors on the main entry door, garage entry door, and back sliding door plus maybe a motion sensor for the basement (there's a bunch of egress windows) and a glass break sensor for the slider. Then do something like Arlo cameras on the back deck and the front porch.
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Dbest
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Oh and one more point to add, we have no mailboxes on the houses, we have the big central lock box type things throughout the neighborhood so nobody should coming to our door without a package in hand.
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Dbest
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What would be the advantage of that over a simplisafe system?
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I had an ADT service. It was shit, the value wasn't there. I need a good set of cameras with a hard drive and latest wifi connectivity for remote/cell phone monitoring. I'm in the same boat as you regarding neighborhood/wife alone with kids except mine is finally over the fears.
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So I've been reading and researching literally all day, Z wave is so much versatile and expandable than SimpliSafe
Here's what I'm thinking so far....

1 Main hub (Samsung Smart Things Hub v2) $100
3 door sensors, main entry, garage to house entry, and glass slider in back (Aeon Labs Z-Wave Door/Window Sensor 6 ZW112-A) $180
1 Siren/Alarm for the main floor (Fortrezz SSA2USR Siren Strobe Alarm) $44
2 Motion sensors for the basement $50
1 Water Sensor hanging in the sump pump well in case it starts to back up (Everspring Z-Wave Flood Sensor ST812) $40
2 outdoor cameras, front and back yard (Arlo Smart Security System with 2 Arlo Cameras VMS3230) $330
2 Smart deadbolts (Kwikset 910 S TRL ZW 15 SMT) $300
1 Smart door bell (Ring Video Doorbell Pro) $250

Grand total comes out to be around $1,300.

At night anyone coming on the property will be caught on video, anyone coming to the front door will be caught on video, for piece of mind all entry points can be verified closed and locked and monitored, plus and an alarm will be triggered by and any type of movement in the basement or entry into to the house. It will also alert us if the sump pump water level is getting to high.

Thoughts?
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Dbest
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The Kwikset deadbolt is one of the few Z-Wave instead of bluetooth options and I like that there's no digital keypad on the outside.

I went ahead and bought it all, $1,148.89 was the grand total shipped via amazon. Wifey and I are both excted.
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I need to look into this sooner than later. One of Kendra's pet sitting clients is a librarian at Northside High (the ethnic school in your town, and the worst in the area). She said these kids are flat out bragging about how they check into school, ditch their 2nd class and go to rob houses and proceeded to name streets that are 2 streets over from ours. Which means they're coming from the opposite side of town and robbing shit during mid day when people are at work. I took my gun out of my truck because of this. She's overheard them saying they'll get some "WYTE BOIZ" to go in normal clothes on the weekend to scope out houses and shit. Lol.

Anywho, I need to dig into cameras soon. I really need to figure out how I'm going to power them first.
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[user not found] wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2017 10:23 pm
Acid666 wrote:I need to look into this sooner than later. One of Kendra's pet sitting clients is a librarian at Northside High (the ethnic school in your town, and the worst in the area). She said these kids are flat out bragging about how they check into school, ditch their 2nd class and go to rob houses and proceeded to name streets that are 2 streets over from ours. Which means they're coming from the opposite side of town and robbing shit during mid day when people are at work. I took my gun out of my truck because of this. She's overheard them saying they'll get some "WYTE BOIZ" to go in normal clothes on the weekend to scope out houses and shit. Lol.

Anywho, I need to dig into cameras soon. I really need to figure out how I'm going to power them first.
Arlo Pro! Batteries!
I've been researching the Arlos after you mentioned em. But seriously? Batteries? Fuck that shizz. I'm not about to go tinkering with batteries. I want to hard-wire this bitch and call it a day. I'm too lazy to be on top of batteries and then go swapping em out.
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