RemoveB4flght

Figured I’d solicit some advice since we are all in the same boat being away from home for periods of time.

Just bought my first house that is not a condo building or inside a gated/patrolled community. I have been looking into some of the various DIY home monitoring systems like Ring, SimpliSafe, etc. and wanted to get some Pireps about how these have worked out while being on the road.
Since no one is in the house when I am away, being able to track comings and goings of vendors/delivery/etc seems a plus.

Anyone feel they have gotten their money’s worth from these types of systems?

TrojanCMH

If the house is vacant when you’re at work you don’t really need much. A ring camera or something similar is really all you need.


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SaintNick

I’ve use Simplysafe for 8-9 years can’t complain. Not sure if they have doorbell camera.

Name User

For a starter system look at Blink. They use AA lithium batteries and can be installed anywhere without running power. Batteries last for several years depending on usage. Storage is free up to a certain number of clips (IMO no need to keep clips unless it is nefarious). Can run 5V power to the cameras if you want. Look for a Black Friday sale for the three camera system for around $150-$170.

It's not perfect but for a minimal investment you'll be up and running with simple motion detection cameras and through experimentation will give you an idea of what you want in a more robust system.

sourdough44

Hopefully it’s an O.K. area. If you had the BFF living with I’d recommend an even tempered German Shepherd.

The UPS guy is coming today, I’ll keep ours under wraps until he is gone.

rickair7777

May want to consider a monitored system, simply because you can't always respond to alarms personally as a pilot. That depends on the value of your stuff, the nature of the 'hood, and how much value you place on peace-of-mind. It is more costly, plus $30/month for monitoring.

I use a monitored system mainly for the safety of the family at night when I'm gone but it's nice to know the po-po will roll if anyone breaks in during the day when everyone's gone (and the alarm will probably scare them off anyway).

Name User

Monitored response time really depends on your locality. Dallas suburbs? Less than 5 mins with community watch there before then.

But there are also many major cities that just won't respond to an alarm. San Francisco, Seattle, Vegas. In fact 40% of larger cities have flat out stopped responding.

My neighborhood of 200 homes had three break ins over two days. Even when the cops did show up (hours later) all they did was make a report for insurance purposes.

I encourage anyone serious about security to spend an hour or two on YouTube watching thief interviews. They will tell you what they look for and how they rob. Most are gone in just a few mins and look for specific items such as jewelry. Then they walk out the front door with a pillow case.

rickair7777

Yes, that's true as well. You can leave some low-hanging fruit available (consumer electronics, costume jewelry, etc) while carefully securing the real valuables. Would the FBI find it all? Of course. But a crook is likely to quickly cut and run to minimize his risk once he has a little reward in hand for his efforts... especially if the alarm is blaring.

Also make sure your HDDs are encrypted... your data could be part of the haul today.

There's two classes of burglars...

Amateurs, which is teenage punks and bums/dopers in search of a fix. They're likely to be scared away by an alarm.

Pros, who are smarter and are less likely to bother the likes of us anyway because they know we don't have any REAL valuables and they really don't want to go to prison over a $30 DVD Player. Pros will know the response time, if any.

AirBear

If you haven't seen this already there's a great YouTube video by Frank Abagnale (the real "Catch me if You Can" guy"). He's talking to a group of Google employees and has some great security advice:

https://youtu.be/vsMydMDi3rI