{"id":573,"date":"2017-02-08T16:10:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T00:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/?p=573"},"modified":"2017-02-09T12:34:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T20:34:38","slug":"perp-walk-security-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/buildingfromscratch.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/08\/perp-walk-security-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Perp walk (security update)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The system has gotten its first real test in the last couple of weeks as we’ve had some uninvited visitors.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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He’s wearing shorts with the logo of our local university.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The second uninvited guest was significantly more nefarious.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Here he is creeping (literally) up to the front porch.<\/p>\n

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And walking through the house.<\/p>\n

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And here he is leaving with the leaf blower.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have to laugh a bit about this guy.\u00a0 He was seemingly clueless that he was walking in front of cameras that were capturing very good pictures and video of him.\u00a0 We even got a pretty good snapshot of part of the tattoo on his neck.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in this case, a bit of technical failure and human failure resulted in us not noticing the activity until after he had left.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Both experiences have helped us learn where the security is failing.\u00a0 We improved the system the next day, by adjusting the motion sensitivity a bit on the existing cameras, and adding:<\/p>\n