When we vacated the house on the property, and subsequently left it unattended at night and on weekends, we put up a security system using a combination of IP video cameras that record in various ways, and battery operated motion sensitive video cameras.

The system has gotten its first real test in the last couple of weeks as we’ve had some uninvited visitors.   The first guy we caught appears to have gone through our house but left with nothing, and left out the back fence, which is rather strange.

He’s wearing shorts with the logo of our local university.  As he wasn’t carrying anything, and he came in during daylight, we suspect he was a local just looking to check the site out.  In this case, we were notified by the motion cameras immediately, but since he left rather quickly and was not carrying anything, we didn’t bother calling the police.

The second uninvited guest was significantly more nefarious.  He climbed over the fence at 9pm last Friday night, brought his own flashlight, did a pretty quick and thorough job of digging around for something to steal, and then left with a battery operated leaf blower.

Here he is creeping (literally) up to the front porch.

And walking through the house.

And here he is leaving with the leaf blower.

I have to laugh a bit about this guy.  He was seemingly clueless that he was walking in front of cameras that were capturing very good pictures and video of him.  We even got a pretty good snapshot of part of the tattoo on his neck.

Unfortunately, in this case, a bit of technical failure and human failure resulted in us not noticing the activity until after he had left.  One of the cameras didn’t have the sensitivity set high enough, and the alert from another a few minutes later came to my phone while I was driving with the ringer off, and I didn’t notice it until 15 minutes later.  Fearing his short visit was a prelude to a return visit later in the evening to steal more, we called the police and they did a full sweep of the property and some additional drive-bys throughout the night.

Both experiences have helped us learn where the security is failing.  We improved the system the next day, by adjusting the motion sensitivity a bit on the existing cameras, and adding:

• 5 more motion cameras
• 3 more IP video cameras
• 11 battery operated motion lights
• 2 remotely operated sirens

We now have a total of 20 cameras, 10 motion and 10 IP, around the property.  It is simply impossible to come onto the property at all without setting off the motion alerts, alerting us  immediately, and being recorded multiple times.  Additionally, if we do see someone there that isn’t supposed to, we can remotely set off the sirens to let them know the police are on the way.

Construction site theft is pretty common.  A few months ago I heard of a job that had over $10,000 in tools stolen.  Ours is a big job; at any given time there are tens of thousands dollars of materials and tools on the site, so security is important.

Additionally, previous home security systems I’ve set up, and especially the one for this job site, serve as a learning experience for the design and implementation of a system for my businesses, where much more is at stake, and theft is very common.  For example, a day before we started moving into our current building, the air conditioning cores were stolen, resulting in a loss of $25,000.  I’ve learned a lot through setting up this system that has helped us keep our businesses secure.

The only thing I wish existed that I haven’t been able to find is a remote PA system, that would allow me to talk to an intruder on the property through my smart phone, wherever I am, to scare them away.  Now that would be cool!

UPDATE: The Police Department was able to identify the suspect from the video and have issued a warrant for his arrest.  The security system paid off.