DIY Security: What did you do today?

[Lex_Luthor]

I decided to replace my motion sensor lights and go for LED, but my dilemma was that if I switched to a cheap fixture running LED, I'd have to remember to turn it on every evening and turn it off every morning - or just let it run all day and all night.

So I opted to hack my new fixture and use the motion sensor from the old fixture. It's a bit ugly, but I'm probably going to paint the sensor black sometime. Here's what I did. (I was a little late to the game on taking pictures, but I'll share what I have.)

-I made notes about which wires were connected where in the old motion sensor light, before taking it apart. (It's super easy wiring.)
-Took the sensor apart & cleaned it.
- Extended a couple wires
-Drilled out a small hole in the sensor casing, as well as through the new fixture. Attached the two with a screw, nut, & a couple washers.
-Soldered connections, put on heat shrink, installed rubber grommets to run wiring through.

That's pretty much it! Now I have to connect it to the garage and see if it works!

It works! And the motion sensor works well too.

[rbeau30]

I just got one of these. It seems to work okay. Pretty easy to set up.

http://www.amazon.com/Ring-Wi-Fi-Ena...=ring+doorbell



We spend lots of time in the basement where we can't always hear the doorbell. This wires into the existing doorbell wiring, and uses your wifi. Rings the normal bell, and your smart phone.

It also has a motion sensing ability and lets you know if someone is between 5 and 30 feet away from your front door (sensitivity is configurable), and allows you to see and talk to them.

[Brian]

That bell looks interesting. Will have to take a look at it.

I put in a few more cameras over the weekend, and bought an upgraded DVR/PC for the newer system. Still working out the kinks with the motion detection, making sure that it has enough frames buffered, as it tends to cut in and out slightly. The IR lights on the camera are annoying and attracting spiders, so I probably will have to address that at some point as well.

[Graves]

Nice Project Irving!

Because Comcast is stupid (on the order of "we have to rewire your cable to add some wireless devices to your already existing Xfinity Home system.") I am taking home surveillance into my own hands.

I ordered a Night Owl DVR system:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1


Will be here tomorrow. Thank you Amazon Prime!

More posts to come!

After a bunch of shopping these out, I thought I had a system nailed down until I saw this post. I get mine on Wednesday. I think I may need a little more cable though...

[Lex_Luthor]

I made a spare key hide a couple weeks ago. Chose a good sized rock, washed it, & let it dry. I dug a hole, put a regular brick inside & filled around it, including the two outer holes. I hot glued the lid to an old pill bottle to the bottom of the rock. Then I inserted the key, closed the pill container and set the rock & pill bottle onto the brick, with the bottle going inside the middle hole of the brick. Then filled with dirt around the rock. Done.

[Wulf202]

Got so many ridiculous quotes for alarms I installed my own self monitored system. Less than $200 and it blows up my phone if its activated. Which ive done on accident twice already.

[rbeau30]

That is a pretty cool Idea Lex.

Got so many ridiculous quotes for alarms I installed my own self monitored system. Less than $200 and it blows up my phone if its activated. Which ive done on accident twice already.

I have been wanting to use my pre-wired house and put in my own module and monitor it all myself. Is this what you did?

Can you add some specifics on what you have done?


Update on my Night Owl Camera System. I have just bought the last two cameras to fill up the 8 channels in my DVR. I have it set up so I can see the cameras on my phone from anywhere. These last two cameras I am going to get in this weekend. They are the ones that are going the furthest back from the attic access hatch, so I will be doing a fair amount of crawling. I figured the weather will be cool and so will be the attic.

May get another 8 channel DVR for cameras inside, or get a 16 channel to put more cameras outside. I would like to be able to see the street out front and out back with lots of pedestrian traffic going on.

[Wulf202]

http://www.dx.com/p/gsm-2-7-lcd-wire...5#.VXvYHKNMHFo

I picked up a wireless gsm kit from dx.com once you get past the engrish its pretty straightforward. I live in an apartment so the wireless was necessary though id rather have wired. FOB to arm and disarm so I hid the unit in my place. 2 motions 2 door sensors is all I need to cover all the entry points. Ill likely be adding anonther motion to have redundancy on the front door. It came with enough sensors to do my place 3x

Got a prepaid sim card from alarmsim.com thay was kind of a hassle. Shit customer service. But its got no monthly fee and is an unlocked Verizon card. Since I have Verizon its real easy to check signal strength

[rbeau30]

http://www.dx.com/p/gsm-2-7-lcd-wire...5#.VXvYHKNMHFo

I picked up a wireless gsm kit from dx.com once you get past the engrish its pretty straightforward. I live in an apartment so the wireless was necessary though id rather have wired. FOB to arm and disarm so I hid the unit in my place. 2 motions 2 door sensors is all I need to cover all the entry points. Ill likely be adding anonther motion to have redundancy on the front door. It came with enough sensors to do my place 3x

Got a prepaid sim card from alarmsim.com thay was kind of a hassle. Shit customer service. But its got no monthly fee and is an unlocked Verizon card. Since I have Verizon its real easy to check signal strength

That is pretty darn cool. Looks easy to set up too.

I was paying Comcast $360/month for cable, internet and home security. Slowly replacing all that with other stuff... Home security is the last to be replaced. All of their sensors keep dropping off the system, and I constantly have to re-pair them.

[Brian]

2gig will let you home monitor via cell call as well, and can link to alarm.com if you want to (with or without monitoring).
I had some good luck with ebay sales and suretydiy.com which is a monitoring company that supports DIY installs.