We are in the process of planning to beef up our home security and integrate a few smart switches over a period of time. We live a very safe area; however, there has been a steady increase in break-ins recently specifically targeting a particular section of the community for valuables. These thefts happen even during the day time. All these organised group require is a short window of opportunity lasting even 30 mins. They break in, scan the house with metal scanners for valuables like jewels, leave everything untouched except the valuables. If they don’t find anything, they can ransack the house. Touch wood, we are fine. We have an ADT monitored police burglar alarm in our detached property. We also added a fire alarm. We don’t have any major issues with their service. We know no security is fool proof for determined burglars. The burglar alarm — even monitored — aren’t going to be effective when these groups require just 0.5 hour of an empty house. Nevertheless, we are thinking what can be done to improve the security as a deterrent. We are thinking, may be : * Video door bell, CCTV outside and/or inside the house. * Install a few smart switches - not use smart switch provider’s clouds; but, we are ok to use Apple home kit and enable icloud access for away home remote access * We already have motion-sensitive lights. Not sure, we want to invest in a dusk-dawn automatic lights for running costs reasons. * Check and install anti-snap locks on all doors, assuming the windows are stable. Most of the windows are always locked. * Perhaps, smart curtains? We want to keep the costs down. We welcome your thoughts, recommendations and comments. We don’t have plans to move away from ADT, unless there a compelling reason. Am happy to look at the DIY route in the case of smart home category. Thx for reading !

> @"Gagaryn"#p4635 A big barky dog. Sorry. Please clarify.

The best deterrent you can buy, is a dog that barks........beats all your alarms!

Or a sign in door vsaying beware of dog.

Start a neighbourhood watch if there isn’t already one in your area ?

Dogs are great but a steak laced with drugs knocks them out pretty fast. My neighbour had two very aggressive Rottweillers. Drugged and sleeping soundly hours after burglars relieved them of an entire safe that was concreted into the floor. Full of commercial jewellery. Someone knew it was there i guess and also knew that there was a reason they kept two Rottweillers. I suspect a good guard dog is a real asset when you are at home but of less value against professional theives when you are absent.

Thx for all the suggestions. Love the dog to bits. Agree. They are the best deterrent. I have been wanting a German Shepherd for a long time. My wife is so scared, will start shrieking at the sight of a dog at a distance and have seen her trembling with fear taking a quite a while to calm down. Unfortunately, I can’t as I don’t want her live in constant fear. Sign post is a good idea and better than nothing. I don’t think my street is in the neighbourhood watch scheme. We need every household to be part of the scheme, is it not ? Can anyone have a view or an advisory on an independent home security evaluation expert please? The Alarm companies always advise you with a commercial intent.

> @"tompoland"#p4648 entire safe that was concreted into the floor. Thanks for demolishing the idea! 😂 If we are away, even a video monitoring is of no use. I know an acquaintance of ours watched their house looted in real time. They couldn’t do anything except trying to scramble some one to the crime scene. By the time police and their friends arrived, they cleaned out everything. Long break, they go to Kennels. There is only so much we can do to protect. Thx for the inputs.

Personally, I just wouldn't worry about it. Burglaries unfortunately are a fact of life - always have been and always will be. You have already made your property a less appealing proposition than others by installing basic security measures like the alarm and motion activated lighting. This will encourage opportunist thiefs to look elsewhere. There is nothing proportionate that you can do to deter professional burglars from breaking in. Every alarm and security measure can be bypassed or broken if there is sufficient will to do so. Adding further measures like more lighting, better locks etc might make you feel safer - and that might be reason enough to install them - but is unlikely to deter anyone who isn't already deterred.

@"Gagaryn"#p4656 You hit the nail on the problem statement. Professional burglars are like professional hackers. We can’t shield if they want to get in. Thx for the inputs.

Home Security and Smart Home

LMSC

Can’t have Philips hue bulbs as our recently installed LEDs will stay. Perhaps, we will use when our corner and table lamps fail. At the moment we use them as holiday lamps controlled by a manual timer (preset).

Meldrew How does your work? Could you elaborate please ?

Thx

Meldrew

LMSC Philips have the hue app which can be used to set up timers or custom settings having the lights come on at a set time or off at a set time. Or you can use sunset and sunrise as the base setting for the lights to come on or off at sunrise. ie on or off at sunset plus so many minutes past and say on or off at sunrise plus so minutes past. You have another set of settings for linking a device to the app for switching lights on and off when leaving and arriving home, I assume you would use a phone with the app installed. You can also link to a Yale alarm system to switch lights on if the alarm is triggered. I have a timer set have not used for much else. The outside lights all are switched by a Phillips pir. The pir can only switch a maximum of 3 lights though. So far it’s been all ok. I have linked Alexa with the hue so I just tell Alexa to switch lights on and off which is not bad. Hope I have explained ok.

LMSC

Meldrew Thanks for the details.

Very sorry; my mistake. I meant to ask the curtains, which I thought are smart curtains. Please ignore. 😊

Meldrew

LMSC No problem. We have roller blinds in all rooms which are rechargeable.
They are controlled by a app Neoblinds linked via a powerhade smart controller. You can set times plus a favourite position for each blind with each blind being linked to a room. And it’s own individual time setting.

LMSC

Meldrew Very interesting!

How do you find them? Battery performance and privacy issues with the app, etc.

Thank you.

Meldrew

LMSC Battery performance is as we were told when buying charging on average every six months. Privacy for the roller blinds is slightly better than net curtains. The silhouette blinds we have give better privacy and when opened to align the alternate pattern it still gives good privacy but let’s some more light in. Obviously you have a choice of material when purchasing which gives you options.

LMSC

Meldrew

Does the app of yours require you to login and what’s the extent of details they collect - location, IP address, etc?

Thanks mate!

DavecUK

Meldrew cctv. Not sure which way to go at the moment.

CCTV is really good…you can actually see them breaking in and robbing you if you are not there…🤣

Meldrew

DavecUK So heart warming that is Dave 😀 if you go for the indoor cameras you can watch them go from room to room, bit more entertaining.

LMSC

DavecUK

DavecUK CCTV is really good…you can actually see them breaking in and robbing you if you are not there…

True. One of our friends’ friend family were in India and they watched it live. They couldn’t do anything but to watch helplessly. By the time they managed to get the police and friends involved, the robbers cleaned out the property. Feel sorry but 😱🤣

hornbyben

LMSC No problem, I’m happy to help if I can.

Correct, we didn’t change any wall sockets. We have a couple of relay sockets that can be used if we want for lamps, but to be honest we don’t use them at the minute. We had one location where we knew we wanted a lamp, so we got a lamp socket installed at this location.

I’m always conflicted with smart doors. I think they sound cool, but would I trust them to be reliable enough not to carry a key, and if you’re still carrying a key what’s the point. I decided just to get all the doors keyed alike so I only have to carry one key.

I don’t have any useful documents unfortunately. We discussed with a home automation consultant and agreed a spec, and then he just quoted. I don’t think he charged for an initial chat, but he’s a smaller local player. He’s in Guildford, so if you happen to be in that region too, let me know and I’ll email you his details.

Good luck

LMSC

hornbyben Many thanks mate. No, we live in the Reading area. Please email me his contact details. I will email him any way. My email address is below my signature.

We are taking a two-step process.

Address home insulation. Look at how we can make the property energy efficient. It looses heat as our home is > 40 years old. I think all doors and windows must go. We do want to look at some appliances as an utility alternative
Look at beefing up the security - smart lights, smart blinds/curtains, simple enhancements as Dave suggested.

I do want our home automation to be Matter compliant.

The smart doors does appeal to us but not confident enough to trust it at the moment.

When you can, could you explain how you integrated ethernet cables behind the switches please? Perhaps, picture or two will help.

Appreciate all your detailed inputs and help mate.

Cheers!

Meldrew

LMSC The app required me to have an account which was just an email address and then set up a password. I then just needed my Wi-Fi password to connect the controller then set up rooms and blinds etc.

DavecUK

LMSC By the time they managed to get the police and friends involved, the robbers cleaned out the property. Feel sorry but 😱🤣

You mean they didn’t steal the security cameras as well.

This will make you laugh

LMSC

DavecUK 😱😱😱🤣🤣🤣

hornbyben

LMSC I just sent you an email, so let me know if you don’t get it.

Regarding the Ethernet to the light switches this replaces the original wiring and is pulled through. I don’t have any pictures to hand, but I’m planning on changing some of my switches in the next few weeks, so I’ll try to remember to take a photo.

You essentially though just have an Ethernet cable running from the switch to the server. One core is powered at 24v (fed to all gangs in that switch), the other cores are attached to each gang as required (one per gang). In the server cabinet the wires from each gang are connected to digital inputs on the server. When you press the switch the server input sees the 24v and knows the switch has been pressed.

Your lighting wiring is similar, each light or group of lights are wired back to the server cabinet where relays sit. When the relay is opened the light is turned on.

I think they also do some relays that can sit in your back box and minimise wiring changes, but I don’t have any experience of these, so leave that to a professional to advise on that.

LMSC

hornbyben Thanks. This is helpful. Cheers!

SouthMark45

Having spent countless hours days looking at this for my home and the fact I didn’t want a fully wired cctv solution with a server storing all the data and service/maintenance costs I went down a different route ie a mixture of wired and wireless devices that store all of the data in the cloud so could be accessed remotely. Simplicity!

If your looking into home automation as a wider subject best advise is pick an ecosystem first and there really is only 2 main players that cover 90% of devices Google and Amazon

I decided on the Amazon route for cameras and doorbells and a mixture of wired and wireless devices etc this was primarily because I already use Alexa compatible devices and do a fair bit of automation already using Alexa and IFTTT

I use Ring and Blink for my cameras of which I have several in the front, side and back of my house. I know that if someone steps on to any part of my driveway the flood light switches on and starts recording. This has been quite useful when the postie puts parcels in a safe place

No solution is ever full proof or perfect.

LMSC

SouthMark45 Good to hear your thoughts. Thx.

Eco-friendly home efficiency and smart home automation are closed linked. We are going to do both.

I am not comfortable with both Google and Amazon ecosystems. I don’t trust them.

We are mainly Apple users. For wifi combo, we want to look at Matter standard compliant products; The matter also leverages Thread.

We are thinking of a stand-alone products like Laxone, Lutron, Crestron and Control4 for local access.

We would like to look at Apple home kit on a couple of Apple 4KTV as hubs as Thread border routers - no single point of failure. This will be offloaded selectively on icloud for remote access. Another good / efficient route is VPN, which will avoid all cloud and privacy concerns.

I don’t know at this stage if Home Kit can work through the stand-alone ecosystem. A lot of thinking is required. We will be calling a couple of home-automation experts for a consultation and a quote.

It is a twin project and needs to be looked at closely before starting the work.

LMSC

As a part of making the house eco-friendly, we are also going to consider installing renewables as a final choice - after addressing draught, insulation, replacing doors and windows.

What do you think is the best ?

Solar vs Wind turbine vs Heat pump (air or ground).

Please also recommend if you know good / reliable company that can advise us on the home efficiency aspect as well.

Thx

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