For something like this, the margins for acceptable false positives and true negatives are basically nil. There aren't too many things in this field that have 100% accuracy, and it would have to be very close to be a reliable product.
I couldn't find any details on the tested rates or other technical details on the Aura site, which is expectedly very markety: https://www.aurahome.com/
If this thing wakes me up one time to tell me an unexpected person is in the house and it's a false positive, it's now essentially no better than a $30 motion detector I can get at Home Depot.
I'd also be concerned about people jamming this from their car, a vulnerability that a $30 motion detector from home depot wouldn't have. Either jamming sets off the alarm which opens it up for nightly abuse until you throw it out, or it doesn't set off the alarm and then your house is vulnerable.
Are you sure? I think it was a common theme in Poland that the burglars would stake out an area in summer, looking for people leaving for holidays, and break in when they know it's likely to be empty for a couple days.
So they're not targeting anyone in particular at first, but it's still not really a crime of convenience the way a mugging or bike theft might be.
I meant that they'll choose the easiest houses, even if they spend effort casing them. I'm sure those Polish burglars were avoiding the riskiest homes.
Let's set up some reasoning, flawed maybe, but with a few steps.
1. Are you allowed to jam someone's alarm system? I think that might be reason enough to go to the police. The problem is that the police won't have the expertise to do much about it.
2. For a thief it might not be the smartest thing to carry this around or be near, even if it's in a car. It's like a siren. You don't want to draw attention to your location. I can't imagine a burglar carrying this on them.
3. So, as a burglar you'll have to place a jamming device somewhere and have it go off while you're not there for a very short time. Too short for anyone to pinpoint it and a bit randomized over the night.
4. This is a single attack towards the sensors in your home. A combination with the $30 PIR sensor and some sensor fusion would make this attack much harder. The burglar has to blind the PIR sensor with e.g. an infrared light for a while at the same time which is a physical contraption that is harder to hide. (More likely than: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ggVka_zBis :-)).
5. Top it off with microphones and cameras and you're golden.
6. The big question is: "Do people care enough about real-time detection?". I think the largest market is about catching that bastard! If the police can give me some figures - say a 50% probability - that a person will be arrested if I add some camera system, that would resonate with deeper feelings of justice and long-term prevention of this type of behavior. The justice system works quite simple as well "catch someone in the act". If the police only finds stolen jewelry later on, the judge has much shakier grounds to convict someone.
For something a bit more pro-grade (for a very close price) check out Xandem Home, the Tomographic motion detector. It even creates a map (in the app) reminiscent of harry potter's marauder's map:
My nightmare scenario, as mentioned by another commenter, is of being present in the house when the burglar comes. I don't know what I would do or want in that case. Sometimes, when I am awakened at night by some sound, I have often wondered what I'd do if I do in fact find an intruder in the house.
As someone who does not own a gun and would probably not last long in hand to hand combat with an unarmed person, let alone someone with a knife or gun, I almost wish that I am NOT awakened from my sleep so that the situation ideally does not escalate into anything that can put me in physical danger. At worst, I lose some valuables.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
[Edit: Lots of helpful replies here. Thanks everyone!]
Why make such blanket statements and logically loose arguments? You might as well advise the commenter to refrain from buying knives and baseball bats, too. Because, statistically, you're much more likely to be killed with a knife or a baseball bat in the commission of a crime.
A gun is a tool with a high(er) degree of lethality. Just like any other tool in the house, if one is not trained and practiced in its use, one is far more likely to make an error when using it in an emergency situation.
If you want to make blanket advice statements, at least qualify them. The responsible thing to say, in this situation, is, "Please don't buy a gun without undergoing proper training." Guns are a force multiplier/equalizer and we live in a society where guns are easily obtained by criminals. Telling law abiding citizens to strictly avoid force-multipliers like firearms, in our society, benefits the criminals and anti-gun lobby -- but it doesn't benefit the person to whom you've replied.
In fact, you've only perpetuated the cycle of fear by trying to instill more fear in your argument to avoid guns (lest they kill a family member, murder an innocent person or be shot with the firearm).
I gave sources. You're making an argument that isn't supported by data. There's an excellent overview of the data on the Science Vs. podcast[1], which you'd probably find interesting. It explains why arguments like yours may apply to a few people, but not to the vast majority.
While it's true that training makes you less likely to be killed by a firearm, it has no effect on suicides of family members, someone stealing the gun and using it, someone in the family using it improperly, etc.
> you've only perpetuated the cycle of fear by trying to instill more fear
That was exactly my intention. Guns are dangerous. People should be afraid of them.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
That analogy doesn't make sense. Jet engines weren't invented to kill things quickly with as little proximity and mass as possible. People can avoid jet engines and people who operate them without any difficulty.
Furthermore, jet engines aren't marketed as devices to make people safer in their homes, nor are they stored in homes, nor are they considered to be useful to a layperson.
Kleck's science is terrible. There's an entertaining overview of it on the Science Vs. podcast[1]. His rebuttal is basically debunked at the bottom of the rebuttal itself.
Does it actually make you... or is it a correlation vs causation? Neither of those sources are ones I would trust for being able to tell apart correlation and causation.
Having a car means you are more likely to die in a car accident. The question is if the risk is worth the benefit. If you follow simple gun safety techniques and don't have any mental health issues, your odds of harming yourself or an innocent with a gun is greatly reduced.
Live in a nice neighborhood the police pay attention to. Install an alarm system which makes a lot of noise and calls the cops, probably most people trying to break in will not stick around once the alarm goes off. Statistically the chances of a breakin, especially by some sort of violent uber-cat-burglar, are probably quite low.
[Edit] And as another poster said, get a dog.
It's the principle of parking a crappy car next to a Mercedes. You just need to convince the car thief to steal the other guys car, ie, convince the burglar there are easier targets around.
Hide and call 911 (or whatever emergency number for your country) is usually the advice police give.
If you're not living alone, it's a bit more complicated. Instruct your family to know how to hide in situations of home invasion and to call 911. Engaging with burglars is not really worth the risk. Valuables can be replaced, life cannot.
As for preventative measures, you could get a dog or two (and train them properly), multiple loud alarms all over the house, and put night-vision enabled cameras in very visible places pointed at entry points (the cameras should be obvious to the burglar that it's a camera, it might scare them off).
If you want to go further, burglars tend to not burglarize homes that they know are occupied or with people awake. If you leave lights on or audible TV/radio/music on, it might be enough for them to back out. That could be distracting to sleep/power-bill-costly though.
Not a fun thought experiment to be sure. I own a gun, and I am constantly awoken in the middle of the night for my "real job" so I have an unfair advantage. That is, I generally have my wits about me very quickly post eye opening. Still, I am not sure that discharging a firearm in the darkness of my house would be easy. I am in good shape due to said job, but that doesn't mean the burglar comes after me, they may have my 7 y.o. "hostage"... or something.
I would probably try to negotiate with a burglar. The only thing I really care about are pictures, videos and my family. They can literally have the rest... funny that sometimes I am a bit jealous of people when their houses burn to the ground. They get to start over... I always hope they keep offsite backups of what really matters.
> funny that sometimes I am a bit jealous of people when their houses burn to the ground. They get to start over... I always hope they keep offsite backups of what really matters.
As someone who has had a house destroyed by water damage twice... It's not worth it! The stress from dealing with insurance and displacement is far more than the time you could spend minimizing!
Let's say you have your gun stored properly. How quickly would you be able to arm yourself if the starting point is when you are sleeping? Quick enough to defend against an intruder who knows you are home and still enters? (Honest question. I don't own a gun, never used one. I am thinking of getting licensed for fun at the range.)
Quick access safes are common - usually with either a keypad or biometric access. If you want warning invest in other measures like alarm systems and dogs.
Good call on the training if you're not familiar with firearms.
I would question whether pictures or videos really matter. I think it's the memories that are more important (I'm assuming these pictures and videos have sentimental value, and minimal financial value). It's why I really don't take many pictures when I'm on vacation, at family gatherings, etc.
Pictures can help relive the memories. When I take pictures on vacation, it's not to show off to my friends how cool of a place I'm at (ok, sometimes I'm guilty of that). It's so that afterwards I can look at the picture with my family, and remember the experiences & feelings that went along that static picture.
And who knows what state my mind will be when I get old: those pictures may come in super handy in a few decades.
When I'm on vacation or at family gatherings, I rarely take photos too. So many photos taken nowadays that I don't need to take any unless I see something that others aren't paying attention to. People are always very willing to share given the tech these days.
The kind of person who is in your home on the prowl rarely wants to escalate to Murder 1, unless they're after you and not your things. If you're not confident in your ability to subdue or do not have an opportunity, comply and protect your family. Best you can do, even with training; waking up you're at a disadvantage and don't know if they have backup. I know an Air Force major who has won awards for hand to hand combat and he still let his stuff go. Smart.
Your goal should be to get them out. Grease those wheels. Offer more. Be blunt. Nothing you own is worth the escalation.
They might not have come with the intention to murder (if they did, I am already toast), but it's not uncommon for such things to randomly escalate from a simple burglary into a total disaster. The intruder can freak out or suddenly feel exposed and take an unintentional drastic step. My point it that it's very difficult to second guess these things and anything can happen in the heat of the moment.
Get a full size dog. And an ADT sign outside. I couple these with the means of defending myself and my family (i.e., a bedside gun in a biometric safe and training to use them), but to each their own.
To add to your comment, important to have the right type of dog and one that is trained.
My previous full sized dogs would happily welcome any visitor. My current dobermans don't.
Train the dogs to bark and bite an arm on command. Some people say "oh, my dog will know when to protect me"... really? You're going to rely on a dog's judgement of the situation? I also don't want the dog to just react after I'm getting punched in the face.
There has been numerous times where there is an odd noise in the house. They sleep in my bedroom so I just open the bedroom door and tell them "go get 'em" and I follow them out there while the wife stays behind.
Buy a gun if you're a responsible individual. If you aren't, then take solace in the fact that the odds are low that your house will ever be broken in to, let alone while you are there
I've been in a home that was burgled, and slept through it. It wasn't until I was woken up by my wife asking what I had done with the X-box that it got weird.
Knowing that we had two dogs and three people living in the home, none of whom were apparently woken by the intruders? That freaked me out for quite a while.
Its too bad they can't simply re-use your existing Wifi access point to provide the source energy. That would at least keep from raising the noise floor on the energy level.
When the MIT report came out about using WiFi to "see through walls"[1] in 2013 it seemed like you could use this for motion detection.
This reminds me of another home security product called Cocoon, which uses sound instead of RF.
Side note: if you have a smart home security system that you're actually happy with, I'd like to hear about it. I've been doing research, and it seems almost nobody is happy with the current offerings. It is either equipment problems, or long, expensive contracts.
I sold security systems in 2008, door to door. (Icky, I know.) I had a long time to think about it, every day, and during pitches.
I soon stopped, because I think they aren't worth it (which made me the world's worst salesperson. I remember near the end talking one old woman out of it.) The first important thing is that they won't prevent the nightmare encounter where a thief enters the house when you're there. Second, police are too swamped to have ever reacted in time to catch the thief. To my knowledge, it has never, ever happened.
There is a possible benefit that it may truncate the time in the house. To me this is not a big issue, I suspect most competent thieves are efficient with time.
Finally, there is an unobservable deterrence effect, but that is easily obtained by faking the appearance of a system without needing to enter a contract and pay monitoring fees. The most useless thing about security systems, the monitoring, is the only thing that costs serious money.
The final benefit is life-alert style stuff, but there are better solutions for that.
On the other hand, there is a massive placebo effect, a sense of safety that the monitoring provides. I suppose that is what people pay for.
All good points, and I appreciate your perspective, thank you for replying. For me, I think the greatest benefit is what you mentioned about cutting short the time the intruder has in the home. If I am in a deep sleep, and someone breaks into my home, I would at least like to be awoken with enough time to arm myself (of course hoping that the siren was enough to scare off the intruder). If I'm not home, hopefully this might deter the intruder from getting far enough into the home to get at our valuables. This benefit can also be achieved with a couple dollars worth of the manual door sirens they sell at the hardware store, so I definitely see your point there about the monitoring fees and contracts.
I think this glosses over one benefit of monitoring: someone should be coming in the event an alert condition is triggered.
For example, if I was shot during an armed burglary, it is more likely that someone would be coming to my aid because of my alarm system than without it.
I personally don't feel more safe because of my alarm system. But, I do feel more hopeful that if my (or my spouse's or children's) safety is endangered, that someone will be coming that can increase the likelihood that we will survive that danger.
My family had ADT years ago and when we'd be on vacation and something triggered the alart it would take the police an hour or so to show up. This was in a small town too where they had nothing to do. If you're bleeding out, I doubt you'd just lay there for an hour.
"Second, police are too swamped to have ever reacted in time to catch the thief. To my knowledge, it has never, ever happened."
Anecdotally, I've seen Mountain View PD show up with 3 vehicles on a commercial false alarm in less than 3 minutes, and Sunnyvale PD show up in 1 minute to catch a shoplifter around Sprouts.
The only reason I'd want a home security system is to wake me up if I'm sleeping so that I can grab my gun.
Video cameras would be nice for checking in on the house when away, and for post-mortem purposes if there is a break-in. But I tend to worry about the security vulnerabilities and/or backdoors in the cameras sold for these purposes (particularly the cheap Chinese ones). It's not worth it if randos are spying on you in your own home.
Here's a bit of statistics for you [1]: for every time someone in the US shoots a burglar in self-defence, there are 900 burglars that successfully stole the firearms in the house and got away with it. So by relying on firearms for home self defence, you're 3 orders of magnitude more likely to be arming violent criminals (that are likely to come back and rob you or a neighbor again) than protecting yourself.
Shooting in self defense is a last resort. Especially at night. You'll generally be temporarily blind from the flash and an unprotected indoor shot will cause permanent hearing damage. That doesn't even include the trauma of shooting someone. Most people would just be happy if there attacker simply left at the sight of the firearm (and most do).
You don't know anything about my home defense setup to be wagging your finger at me. My guns are stored in a Graffunder safe when I'm not home. If you know anything about safes, you'll know those guns are not going anywhere, even if the burglars have all weekend with a blowtorch.
As someone else already pointed out, # of criminals shot vs. successful burglaries is a ridiculous statistic. But it's coming from the Violence Policy Center so that's not surprising.
What's your proposed alternative? If burglars are already armed and violent (your own words) I should disarm myself and submit myself to their mercy? No thanks.
Why limit focus to shootings, simply dissuading the intruder is far preferable and probably much more frequent. In my experience most gun owners don't want to shoot anybody.
If, as you suggest, it's much more frequent for a homeowner with a gun to dissuade an intruder without shooting, than it is for the homeowner to shoot the intruder, then it's obviously a much better choice to keep a convincing replica. In that case, you get most of the benefit of a real gun, but there's no chance of your kids injuring/killing someone, or you accidentally injuring/killing a family member, both of which are about as common as shooting an intruder.
Or: If your point is to avoid accidents and not to disarm people you can recommend they get a gun safe.
Around here gun safes are mandatory. And local hunters and sports shooters work together with the police to keep guns out of the hands of people who cannot be trusted.
Guns kept in proper gun safes are pretty much useless against intruders though.
(To be clear, I agree everyone should keep their guns properly stored in gun safes at all times, and I also think guns for self defence are a bad solution in first world countries.)
As sibling already pointed out these stats seems to only tell part of the story. I'd almost say they seem to be deliberately misleading.
Unless there is more details the fact that few burglars were shot probably tells us that most homeowners with guns are peaceful and just use the guns as a deterrent.
> But I tend to worry about the security vulnerabilities and/or backdoors in the cameras sold for these purposes
This is precisely why I try to use Raspberry Pi's for stuff like this. Even then, I do put the devices on a separate guest wifi network that is firewalled off from the rest of my network. It doesn't keep them from being used for DDoS or as a jump point for attackers, but at least it (hopefully) keeps them out of my local network.
That does sound interesting, would you mind sharing what camera hardware you use?
I didn't mention it in my other comment but about 6 months ago I did set up a "YI" brand dome camera[1] for my mother-in-law. It comes with a slick little iPhone/Android app for controlling it, and the setup process / onboarding the device onto her WiFi network was very smooth.
So anyway I was demoing their mobile app to her, and I was going to show her how you'd have to be on her WiFi network with the admin password to be able to access the video stream / device. So I disabled the WiFi on her phone to demo that. My jaw about hit the floor when the video stream was still working over her cellular modem (in other words the video was streaming over the Internet by default)! Note this was fresh out of the box, she didn't sign up for YI's cloud platform option or anything like that.
So yeah I would be very heavy on iptables rules if I were you.
I'm using the official raspberry pi camera module both with a model B and a zero-w. For night vision in my garage, I found a standalone infrared light similar to [1]
I've been meaning to put together a guest network that was only allowed to connect to a single VM / LXC container on my home server. Then I could set up a bunch of those cheap Chinese cameras and ensure that nobody was accessing them remotely while still enjoying internet-accessible video.
I would LOVE to have a security system that automatically locks doors inside the house and fills the room with a thick fog. There are fog machines that work faster than the ones in the club. Hard to find a way out of the room in that case. And hard to find and assault anyone, or steal things, with a thick fog.
Humane - can't get sued for leaving lasting damage - and also
As a fallback, I'd remoty enable use of really unpleasant sound or pepper spray on the perp.
If I lived in a rural area, I would also want a drone to take off half a mile away and film people coming to my house. That way I'd know who's coming and have a record of it even if they thought they destroyed all the surveillance video.
Thoughts? I believe these kinds of things would be far better for security than what's currently on the market.
> If I lived in a rural area, I would also want a drone to take off half a mile away and film people coming to my house. That way I'd know who's coming and have a record of it even if they thought they destroyed all the surveillance video.
I use security cameras strapped to the top of very high trees on my property, triggered by motion detection. Keep it simple. (Suburbs of a major city in Central Florida)
Unfortunately that's a legal minefield. Mantraps have various legal standing around the world, but you are likely to be successfully sued if they result in injury. Seems likely in the case of a panicky criminal who finds themselves suddenly boxed in with mysterious gas.
There are other considerations as well (via wikipedia [1]) : "There is also the possibility that such traps could endanger emergency service personnel such as firefighters who must forcefully enter such buildings during emergencies. As noted in the important US court case of Katko v. Briney, "the law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights of property"
I am pretty sure that a criminal who trespasses on a property that clearly says "private property" has no standing to sue you for what befalls them on your property. Within reason, of course.
That is why private islands have those signs - otherwise someone coming ashore could assume it is a regular public island.
I believe there is a British(?) system that works like this: A sound wavefront generating bar + stroboscope mounted above the door(s) plus fog dispensed from some chemical container.
What do you think about the benefits of just home monitoring/video recording?
I agree with you totally that a security system isn't going to deter or prevent anything. It's also not going to help get police to your house faster - that's basically impossible and active-monitoring tied into some BS ADP tactical ops center (who basically just call the cops for you) is basically worthless.
So my thought was to just have a really good recording system so that in the aftermath of whatever happens, you can give really good info to the police or your own PI to follow a lead. Basically the same thing that corner stores without security people do.
> So my thought was to just have a really good recording system so that in the aftermath of whatever happens, you can give really good info to the police...
I think along these same lines, so I have a combination of some raspberri pi's running a customized version of RPi-Cam-Web-Interface [1], and a ring.com video doorbell.
Speaking of the Ring, if you or anyone else that is reading this has experience with both Python and the SIP protocol, we would love your help with a python project that is trying to get a real-time video stream out of the Ring device without using their App.
I've been watching this project/issue with interest :) It is on my long todo list to dig into this. One of my worries is that even with a hardwired device, the doorbell transformer may not give enough juice for continuous video use. I notice that just after a few minutes of watching the live feed the health status reports 96% battery (down from 100%). Hopefully that isn't the case, and someone is able to find a way to pull the video feed without funneling it through ring.com's infrastructure (I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate a 24x7 video feed running through their systems :))
Well one "solution" could be to just grab "snapshots" of the camera once a second (if it responds fast enough) then close the connection.
I have a Ring "Pro" so the battery level isn't an issue and it's able to do live-view for a few hours no problem (I tried it by leaving the windows 10 app up and running on live view for a while).
Still, if it really is running SIP the whole way, then it most likely can be accessed locally without touching their infrastructure (unless they are using something custom for the Ring-Servers -> Doorbell connection...)
When I lived in a city flat I used to have a sinking feeling every time i came home as I got to the top of the stairs and expected to see the door ajar. Silly I know. Our car was broken into twice, because in those days stealing car stereos was a thing.
Anyway, when we got a house we also brought a diy alarm connected to the land line. It was liberating to know you weren't going to come home to any nasty surprises.
I looked into how they work and wasn't impressed. Easy to jam etc. So one day I may make my own wired one as a hobby project, just because I'm the kind of person who hangs out on HN and thinks that's cool :)
They all pretty much suck, there are some alright ad-hoc type of single-device options (downside of those is absolute reliance on a cloud-service)... but if you're looking for an integrated system for a property you own there's nothing decent.
I just cut my losses and installed a good security camera system that covers the full exterior (using Hikvision cameras and a DVR). If that doesn't deter someone an alarm won't, and at the very least I can keep an eye on anything suspicious and have evidence after the fact.
Mine is great. It sits quietly all night only to spring to life should something out of the ordinary happens. It knows friend from foe, pet from racoon, lost child from home invader, and is the result of a few thousand years of breading. Ill take my four-legged 90lb security system over anything networked. Seeing her sleeping on my couch strikes more fear in burglers than any blinking red light. And i trust her judgement more than the smartest of google's robots.
For a partially DIY option with a certified, well-tested security/fire alarm option a DSC 1832 with the IT-100 serial interface board is an excellent piece of kit. Bought one off a local security company and did all the install myself, and they verified it for me.
With the base board you can run a couple of relays to trigger whatever you'd like. I use it to turn on the lights when the alarm is tripped which helps the camera system I have actually get a picture and not just a dark room. It is also nice when coming home in the dark, and for automating light schedules when out of town.
The IT-100 gives a simple serial interface to monitor/control the entire system from a computer. I used cereal on debian to follow/interact with the serial stream, and a bunch of perl/bash scripts to do things like log events to a mysql database, turn on/off the zoneminder DVR system, manipulate relays, send emails, and pretty much do whatever I wanted.
As far as B&E deterrent, I think having the monitoring company stickers is 90% of the benefit since most criminals are looking for a quick low-risk fix and will just hit your neighbour without a security system. That said, making it hard for them to hang around and really clean you out makes me feel a lot safer, since most valuable are hidden away somewhat.
I also like the cameras so I can check in while out of town. I have heard that video footage has to be REALLY cut and dried as far as identity for the police to use it, so low-res or low-light images are probably useless for prosecution.
You may find that the monitoring costs are paid for by a house-insurance discount that you get for having active fire alarm monitoring
Still, probably not as good as a vicious-sounding dog.
My understanding is that camera are pretty useless in terms of catching people cognizant enough to wear a hoodie/mask, but are useful in convincing your insurance company that a burglary did in fact happen
>I also like the cameras so I can check in while out of town.
Yeah, I have a couple cameras and a temperature sensor. Especially on a longer trip, it's nice to be able to just look in now and then and see that everything seems to be OK. (Of course, it doesn't help if there's an extended power outage but that's rare where I live.)
Really long time ago at an boot sale I bought essentially complete security system made in early 90's by some smallish company that was probably spun-off from Tesla (ie. the elecronics manufacturer "Tesla n.p.") as part of privatization and then probably failed outright. The thing consisted of obviously repurposed parts of other systems and looked like one giant kludge.
But what was the interesting feature of this was that most sensors were based on infrasound, notionally they were meant to detect shattering glass, but somehow the sensitivity was tweaked in such way that they even detected opening of doors/windows (this was mentioned in manual as feature) and even could detect person moving around the room.
I've been happy with my Comcast home security system...but I've never actually armed it so I probably don't count. :-)
I have it because I had a triple play package, TV/phone/internet, and they offered me quadruple play, TV/phone/internet/security, on a two year package that was actually $40/month cheaper than my triple play and included Starz.
There have been a few minor things that I actually have found it useful for that have nothing to do with security, and could easily be accomplished by simpler means.
1. If there is a power outage while I am at work, I can find out when it started and how long it lasted from the security system logs, which log both power out and power back events. Before, I could figure out when power came back from my digital clocks that reset to 12:00 when power comes on. I could improve this if I added an electric analog clock, since in a power outage that would not reset but it would stop ticking. The amount of time the analog clock was behind would then tell the total time power was out, and the digital clock would tell how long ago power came on. That would not tell me if there was a single outage, or multiple outages. It would be fairly easy to build a gizmo specifically for that: analog electric clock hooked up through a relay in such a way that if it loses power, it does not come back on until you press a reset button. That clock would then record the time the first outage started. From that, the time power came back on for the last time (found via the digital clock), and the total outage duration (from the other analog electric clock), one could figure out if there had been a single outage or multiple outages.
2. I wanted to monitor my home temperature while away. I pointed the security camera at a thermometer, and then could use the remote camera app to look at it. (Later replaced with an ESP8266 and temperature sensor that takes a reading every minute and uploads to my website).
3. I had some work done on the house that required everyone present to use a respirator while work was in progress. I went and spent the day at my office, and used the camera to check if the workmen had left before I headed home.
> If there is a power outage while I am at work, I can find out when it started and how long it lasted from the security system logs...
Pingdom works well for this as well :)
> I wanted to monitor my home temperature while away. I pointed the security camera at a thermometer, and then could use the remote camera app to look at it. (Later replaced with en ESP8266 and temperature sensor that takes a reading every minute and uploads to my website).
Is there anything the ESP8266 can't do?? (I also have some of these - Wemos D1 minis) spread around my place for temperature monitoring and general geekery)
I made one out of what was left of an older system (door sensors, motion sensors). Its getting pretty old now as it predates arduinos and was made with a PIC (olimex PIC with ethernet board).
It just posts all of the events from the sensors to a VPS in the cloud (that I have already to run personal web sites). If its "set" with a post from my phone, it simply texts a list of people (wife, dad, good friend) that an "alarm" went off. Otherwise it just records the events for later curiosity.
I've also got one IP camera that I can jump on and look into the main room with.
It was nearly free except for the happy project time to build it and is all I've ever felt I needed.
It's not a full proper security system but could be made into one. I had it alert me when a certain room was entered or had a high temperature or humidity.
I say used (past tense) because some support is now discontinued but I think it is a worthwhile idea.
I haven't tried the sphere and not sure of the status.
New to alarm systems but just put Abode into my first house. Happy with the offering so far, integrates with z-wave and IFTTT. Happy to answer any questions on it: goabode.com
FCC filings show this devices is 2.4Ghz so I would assume that anything from cheap nordic 2.4Ghz chipsets to microwave to a HackRF/BladeRF/LimeSDR/USRP will be able to bother all signals coming out of these devices.
It looks like they are flooding the area and measuring off a reflection. Nothing ground breaking.
Wouldn't this effectively act as a signal jammer for all 2.4 GHz devices if it's constantly transmitting? I'm sure your neighbors will love it when their WiFi goes down every time you leave the house!
I doubt is is going to act like a jammer. It is probably narrow in bandwidth. Your microwave also leaks a healthy amount of 2.4 GHz. That's why most wireless specs that use 2.4 GHz (e.g., Bluetooth) have the concept of channels and hop to avoid interference.
The basic idea of having an RF emitter at one end of the house and a receiver of the other as a whole-house motion detector is interesting. But the sales pitch just screams "fake".
"Invisible ripples in wireless spectrum"? As opposed to visible ripples? Please.
That is super interesting. If I understood it correctly, its like using a Wi-Fi channel as a radar system that both your device as well as an attacker are connected to. And then based off of the interference of your hand when typing, it knows what buttons you pressed. I don't think it would be a practical attack vector because the attacker would probably need to know the physical size dimensions of your phone. And also in an age of phablets not everyone can type with one hand, which may throw off the results.
Interesting tech but it's not clear to me what problem this solves. As is touched on at the end of the article, it's not like there is a lack of sensors that could be used to detect intruders. The main issue for a lot of people is that, in order to take useful action when you're not at home, you need some sort of security service which is a monthly fee and can get expensive.
Depending on the accuracy of it, it could be a fantastic solution to do room-by-room presentence detection in a much more consistent way than other solutions (like infrared motion detection), and with much less of an impact on privacy in the worst case (a video-stream person-detection algorithm will "leak" full video of your house if hacked, this will "leak" your approximate location), and it can do all of this with a single unit compared to a unit for each room with other solutions.
One thing i've wanted since I started doing home-automation stuff is a system that can turn off lights after someone has been out of the room for like 10-15 minutes. IR sensors have false readings a lot (if you are sitting still reading a book, suddenly the lights go out...), not to mention the need for a sensor in each room with good visual coverage of the whole room.
Something like this would be fantastic for that use case, and knowing if someone was home when they aren't supposed to be is just an added bonus.
And you don't need a security service to take action, a neighbor can check if needed, or if you are certain that something is wrong, a call to the police.
One thing i've wanted since I started doing home-automation stuff is a system that can turn off lights after someone has been out of the room for like 10-15 minutes.
The thing is I don't want to have to get a device per room and have to place it in a location that has good visibility of a good portion of the room.
Not to mention you are talking about a bunch of processing which needs to be correct 100% of the time, and it's using cameras so if a hack or "leak" were to happen, there's full video of the inside of my house and my family at stake (something i'm not quite willing to risk yet).
I'm also going to throw a system out if it turns the lights out on me when i cover myself up with a blanket on the couch.
However, I strongly agree here (about the blanket on the couch).
The perfect system should be able to do both 1) passive device-free detection as well as 2) inferring information about your location of any personal device.
To have a device in every room is no problem for me. As long as it is invisible and cheap.
As a side mini-rant, the Starbucks I used to go to had energy-saving motion sensitive light switches in the bathrooms. Walk in, lights turn on, after some idle period they shut back off.
Except the timer interval was way too short. If I'm taking a long shit, sure, I can deal with a slight inconvenience of having to wave my arm to get more light... But if I'm standing there and peeing, and the lights turn off, that's a pretty serious bug!
This is why for the toilet case they are coupled with auto flushers that fire too easily when you lean forward or backwards slightly - it keeps the user standing up suddenly to avoid the splash at intervals small enough to keep the lights on.
Apparently they couldn't figure out an equivalent invention for the standing-urination case, especially since hand sink sensors don't even trigger when you wave your hands entirely over them several times and so most certainly couldn't be used here in the case of the less endowed gentleman...
And that's the exact reason why I hate current solutions for this kind of thing.
When I was younger, we had a motion sensing light switch in my bedroom (because I was a little shit that never turned my lights off). It used to infuriate me because if I rolled over too much at night, the light would go on. If we messed with it to the point that it didn't happen any more, it would turn off when i'm just sitting there reading or something.
Something that could determine where you are not by motion but by the fact that you are a large bag of water would be much more accurate and could basically stop the "lights randomly going off at the worst time" issues.
I have a few "smarthome" type devices but mostly I'm fine with just using light switches and otherwise manual controls. I live more or less in the country in a safe area so I'm not really concerned about someone breaking in when I'm here and neighbors wouldn't necessarily hear an alarm.
I'm not going to say it's "revolutionary" or anything, but it's really really nice to have.
I started out the same as you, the only reason I wanted some of this stuff was so I could turn out the lights when I forgot to, or be able to turn the light off after i'm in bed.
Then it expanded a LOT once I started getting used to it. The system is fully local, and one of my biggest rules is that the system must work manually 100% of the time without fail regardless of whether the "hub" is working or not.
Our light switches work identically to before, they are the traditional up-down toggle flippy switches. But now they go into a z-wave enabled box that proxies them to the real circuit, and that z-wave box can be controlled by the hub.
And it enabled some really nice quality-of-life improvements (even if they are individually all pretty small). Things like turning on the hallway lights when you come home and it's after dark, things like turning off the lights automatically when we all are out of the house. Things like having a button on my bedside table that when hit turns every light in the house off, makes sure the front door is locked, makes sure the garage is closed, and turns off all the TVs. Things like a notification if my wife leaves her hair-straightener plugged in and nobody is home, with an option to turn that outlet off remotely right there in the notification.
We still use our light switches "manually" 90% of the time, but we have found that we now stop turning lights off as one of the other systems will turn it off for us. And while it's not "life changing", it's kind of nice to know you can pick up your drink and dish and take it outside without having to turn the light off as you can just yell to the voice-recognition part to turn it off for you.
Being able to step that system up with something that can intelligently do some of those steps for me without ever being wrong and without tons of intrusive or ugly sensors would be just another benefit.
At a glance, it seems way more useful 'offensively'.
Most systems are installed inside a home, and track entry and exit. That works great if you own the home and start from an empty state (so everything is fine unless someone enters).
But if you don't control the building, or don't know who's inside to start out, then most existing systems fail. Which means Aura seems like a breakthrough specifically for surveilling locations you don't have full ownership of, like someone else's house or a neighboring apartment. Which is a bit disconcerting.
seems like spoofing will be trivial though? When someone walks by my front door on the sidewalk, will it go off? Can my raspi emulate a human to create so many false positives that this is rendered useless? My 2 cents, this sounds great but a device / technology that likely won't overcome all of the 'what abouts' to ultimately get it shipped.
Whatever happened to Google's Project Soli, which was trying to read hand gestures with microwaves and signal processing? [1]
That was roughly the right hardware for this sort of thing.
Couldn't I also rig up a device like this to determine if someone was in their house from the outside? or if I'm in an apartment building... all of my neighbors?
your local swat team is probably equipped with "wall penetrating radar" which they use to assess the situation before entering a building.
There are acoustic versions and they also thread fiber optic cameras under your door, so passive systems that image a building from the emissions in the building are probably something they'd buy too.
Aura apparently detects between a base station and a sensor on opposite sides of the house. So it sounds like you could use exactly this, set up outside, to determine whether anyone is moving around in a home.
That's only a useful signal if someone takes it offline right before breaking in. If you're planning an event you can take it offline a week or more beforehand.
I couldn't find any details on the tested rates or other technical details on the Aura site, which is expectedly very markety: https://www.aurahome.com/
If this thing wakes me up one time to tell me an unexpected person is in the house and it's a false positive, it's now essentially no better than a $30 motion detector I can get at Home Depot.