The Ultimate Home Alarm System

Mailing List

The alarm mlist

Goals

Sensor Ideas

Video

  • motion (detection)

  • zoneminder

  • motion tracking linux google search

  • analog cameras suck - require digitizer to do anything with them, ties up digitizer!

  • CMOS sucks - too noisy to do motion detection - use CCD instead

  • detect things which are not permanent but not moving for long time (used in airports to detect bombs)

  • look into Axis cameras

  • TODO: get comments sent to BAHA list, incorporate them here

  • experience with video drivers in Linux
    • there's v4l2 v4l2, then another interface called uvc
    • i ended up using uvc_streamer
    • and the driver that is "good" is gspca
    • luvcviewer was the program that i ended getting the camera to show up with

  • desirable that they be hidden, or out of easy reach, so people don't break them down as soon as they enter

  • would be nice to be able to reposition them occasionally for surprise effect

USB cameras

  • length of USB cables to webcams is limited
  • USB webcams have limited focal depth
  • take off IR filter and you get NIR
  • not many meant for covert use

Polycom Equipment

  • not cheap - $700/unit? - but I already have some
  • pan/tilt/zoom awesomeness
  • 20x optical zoom
  • web-controllable
  • can you imagine a camera following you around?
  • crappy old H.323 video standard, hard to firewall properly

Audio

  • noise integrator - to detect prolonged, loud sounds (banging)
  • glass break detection
  • voice detection
  • multiple microphones in place feeding into system
  • limited audio inputs on standard Linux systems, may require audio hardware

Monitoring

Console

Status Indicators

  • visual indicator when monitoring is on (from inside)
  • indicator from outside when alarm is on

Turning On/Off

  • automatic on when I leave (easy to use = more reliable = less forgetting)
    • when I dissociate from WAP
    • by radio of other kind (have screenlock USB dongle that does it, need to reverse-engineer)
    • by a push-button on outside of door

  • automatic off when in range is dangerous (proxy/relay attack)

  • by cell phone (asterisk AGI)

  • over Internet (in case you're at work and forgot to enable)

Local Networking

Wireless

  • WiFi (DSSS, encrypted)
  • Bluetooth (FH, encrypted)
  • Zigbee/Nordic
  • cheap radio module ($1 ea, lasts for months on one battery)
  • issues: privacy, jamming, battery life

Wired

  • multiplexing/polling allows us to have many sensors on few inputs
  • what kind of wiring to use for wired sensors? NC pairs of wires - prevents cutting but not shorting
  • I like phone/ethernet line/connectors, simple, inexpensive, widely available, easy to make

Monitoring

  • periodic handshake with remote nodes; alarm if handshake fails, for wired and wireless

Hardware

Intrusion Response