When it comes to locking down your home and keeping the criminals out, there’s a lot of very cool gadgets out there. Some of them have been around for a while, and others are only made possible by the neverending march of technology, bringing new and amazing products to the marketplace.
The engineers and designers behind a lot of these products are smart. There’s often an emphasis on subterfuge: trick, in other words, that they play on would-be intruders. Let’s check out some of the best gadgets out there for putting your home on lockdown.
Barking Dog Alarm
If you don’t fancy having your dog destroyed, all because it bit an intruder, but want to deter them nonetheless, there’s now a solution. It’s called the barking dog alarm, and it mimics the sound of your favorite neighborhood Rottweiler, deterring burglars from risking having their arm bitten off by your vicious mutt.
The alarm has movement sensors which, once triggered, set off the sounds designed to mimic a real-life guard dog standing right behind the door. One of the cool things about the dog barking alarm is the 360-degree radar system that it uses to detect intruders. Because it relies on radio waves, it can pick up movement through walls.
Security Light
Security lights have been around for a while. They rely on passive infrared sensors designed to detect the movement of any warm-blooded creature in the vicinity. Often a fox can set off a security light during the middle of the night which is why so many lights are set up in darker, dingier corners of a property.
If there’s a shady doorway leading to your house, consider investing in a security light. It’ll deter criminals from breaking and entering, especially when everybody in the street can see what they’re doing, and it’ll make it easier to find the right key on those cold, dark December evenings.
Bogus Camera Systems
Back in World War Two, the Allies created a bunch of dummy tanks and artillery, designed to fool the Germans into thinking that they were amassing an invasion force. It was a giant operation built around deception, designed to make sure that the German forces wouldn’t even attempt to invade Britain until they had a bigger army, capable of taking on so much military hardware.
The whole thing was a ruse, of course, but it taught security experts an important lesson. Merely pretending you were better defended than you were could confer a significant strategic advantage. The art of bluffing your way to better security has now found its way into the modern home.
Dummy cameras are making significant inroads into the domestic security market, all thanks to the fact that they are a lot cheaper than a regular, fully wired, CCTV system. What’s more, these cameras are designed to be as realistic as possible, using proper camera housing and lenses, meaning that any would-be intruder will find it impossible to tell the difference between it and the real thing.
The Siren Padlock
Many of us have sheds, bikes, and outhouses that are locked up with a simple padlock. The problem with this is that regular old padlocks are the ultimate low-tech security solution and a determined criminal can soon cut his or her way through one without you knowing a thing about it.
Now, though, companies are fighting back, offering padlocks that actually produce an alarm when tampered with. Siren padlocks can be configured to make a noise if they are touched, knocked or kicked, hopefully giving thieves a big scare in the process.
Fake TV Lights
If you’ve ever seen a house from the street where the family is settled in for a night of TV, you’ll be familiar with the light it produces. TVs blare out a sort of flickering, blue hue that is pretty unmistakable. An intelligent security company came up with the idea, therefore, to use this lighting to homeowners’ advantage.
Nothing advertises the fact that you’re at home better than the TV being on, and so now security companies are using artificial TV lights as a way of pretending that homeowners are in residence and tricking criminals. The cool thing about these lights is that they rely on LEDs, meaning that they don’t use up a lot of electricity.
All the criminals in your neighborhood will be under the impression that you’re at home with your feet up watching TV, even if you’re miles away on the other side of the planet, enjoying a week long holiday.
Dashboard Apps
There are no so many home security apps, gadgets, and gizmos that it can be rather difficult to track it all. But now, companies like CPI and others have begun trying to pull all of the apparatus of their security systems together into a single app.
According to CPI reviews, these dashboards provide users with notifications, just like any other app-based system on your phone, and they tell you information like whether your front door is unlocked or whether your alarm has just been activated. In other words, you get real-time security updates just like you get updates on your emails in real time.
Camouflaged Safes
Are you a gold bug? If you are, then you might be interested in a camouflaged safe, also known as camo safes in the industry. The idea here is to give consumers the opportunity to buy safes that don’t look like safes to throw criminals off the scent.
Think about it: there’s no more obvious a target for criminals than a safety deposit box sitting in your desk drawers in your office. It’s the first thing they’re going to pick up and run off with, especially if it feels heavy and full of gold. Now companies are making safes that are designed to impersonate regular household objects, like Heinz baked bean tins and Pringles tubes.
The hope is that they’ll just be passed by by burglars who don’t usually raid the pantry while they’re burgling a home.
Pressure Activated Door Mat
For years, we’ve been walking into corner shops with a chime on the door to warn the shop owner that somebody is in their establishment. It’s meant to be both a security device, and a mechanism to make sure that there’s someone at the cash register. But now there’s a twenty-first-century version of the door chime that is coming to a home near you.
Essentially, it’s a system that relies on a doormat and a chime unit. The doormat contains a pressure sensor which, when activated, sends a signal to the chime unit wirelessly. The chime unit then makes a noise, alerting you to the presence of somebody at your door. This sort of thing is a good idea for people who want to be able to keep their door unlocked throughout the day, but also want to know whether they’ve got a visitor.
Night Vision Cameras
Technology isn’t just cheaper these days, it’s also qualitatively better. In the past, homeowners had to put up with regular cameras to monitor their properties. They were fine during the day, but come nighttime, they were useless.
Now camera makers are wowing consumers with night vision cameras, a technology that used to be reserved for the military. These night vision cameras kick in when it gets dark, streaming images to computers and allowing homeowners to keep an eye on their front porches, side alleys and gardens. Many of these systems also connect to smartphones, meaning you can monitor your home from anywhere with an internet connection.
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