Install Your Own Home Security System

A home security system can run into thousands of dollars, involve miles of wiring, a professional installation and a monthly monitoring fee or it can cost a few hundred dollars and you can set it up yourself in an hour or two. It all depends on what you want and what you’re willing to invest. For this issue’s DIY installment we elected to run through the installation of a simple wireless security/home monitoring system.

We used Motorola’s PC-controlled HMEZ1000 Easy Start Kit which includes a wireless base station and a wireless motion detection camera. In addition we added one HMWS1060 wireless water sensor, one HMDS1040 wireless door/window sensor and another wireless camera. The cost for the hardware/software ran about $500, and the whole process took about a hour to set up and configure. Information about the products and additional accessories can be found at www.motorola.com.

If I wanted to go further with this system, I’d probably add about six more door/window sensors and an alarm. This system uses e-mail alerts to let you know what’s going on when you’re away and keeps an archive of all recorded events. You can’t sit at your office computer and watch live video of your living room, but that feature will probably be added to the system at a later date.

A home monitoring system can be used to detect intruders, notify you of a leaky basement, or let you watch what the dog does when you’re out of the house. If your cell phone is capable of receiving e-mail, then you can even get the system’s activity alerts on your cell, though you won’t be able to view the attached images taken by the remote cameras.

Step 1: Install the software

Unpack the Starter Kit box and locate the CD, the gateway, the wireless camera and all the accompanying AC adapters and the Quick Start Guide. Place the CD in your computer’s CD or DVD drive. If your PC is configured to auto play, the software will launch automatically. The Motorola Home Monitor software must be installed on your PC before anything else is connected. After a few installation questions, the installation wizard will prompt you to connect the gateway.

Step 2: Install the gateway base station

First remove the back panel from the gateway, plug in the AC adaptor and attach the gateway’s USB cable to your PC. Windows will announced that a new USB device has been detected and will attempt to locate the appropriate driver. In my case the driver wasn’t found automatically, so I had to instruct the wizard to look in the installation CD—at which point I was informed that the driver wasn’t approved by Microsoft. Go ahead and install it anyway (it won’t work if you don’t). If you use a Wi-Fi network, the software will ask you to tell it what channel your existing network uses to make sure the new LAN doesn’t interfere (go to Window network connections to find the channel). After the driver is loaded, you’ll be ready to start installing the monitoring devices.

Step 3: Install the monitoring devices (cameras, door sensors)

Each monitoring device needs to be recognized by the software in the detection mode. To make installation easy, have all the devices with you during the detection mode, then relocate them throughout the house once you’re sure everything is working.

I started with one of the cameras. In order to be detected by the software, you must have the camera plugged into an AC outlet, but later you may switch to AA battery power, although five batteries only allows you about two hours of video function.

Once the device is powered, you must use the discovery tool, a toothpick-like probe, to poke a recessed button. The device then sends out a signal to the gateway, which is recognized by the software. Check the PC to make sure the device is discovered and properly identified. The cameras are turned on by rotating the antenna into the on-position. While the cameras each have a built-in antenna, the sensor devices have separate antennas which need to be screwed into place. Repeat the same discovery steps with each device. The gateway can communicate with three wired cameras, six wireless cameras and up to eight other wireless devices.

Step 4: Place the devices

Cameras

These are not the spy cams you use for checking out the babysitter or the sunbather in the next yard. They’re big enough to been seen, so don’t bother hiding them, but be discrete in their placement. If you want to see who’s lurking about the outside of the house, then place the cams either in windows or mount them on outside walls (remember they must be plugged into an outlet, and the AC adapter is too large for many outdoor lamp fixtures). I put one on a windowsill and aimed it at my front porch and the other in a location in the kitchen where it gave a good view of the back door and two windows. Another good use would be to position one where you could see if the dog was behaving while you were away. You may place the camera on a flat surface or use the included screws to attach it to a wall.

Door/window sensor

The sensors come in two parts: the main transmitter and the magnetic contact. You attach the sensor to the door frame and the magnetic contact directly next to it on the door (or visa versa—doesn’t really matter). The tops of the contact and the sensor should line up, and the space between the two should be between 1/10 inch and 1/2 inch. Both parts of the device are easily installed with included double-sided tape, but the sensor can also be hung with screws (included), which is a better option since you’ll need to replace the two AAA batteries from time to time. Once installed, the sensor will send a message to the gateway every time the door or window is opened or closed. I placed the sensor on my back door, but in complete system I’d include the front door and all of the first floor windows.

Water sensor

The water sensor includes the main sensor unit, a water probe and an antenna. You can use it to measure either the presence or absence of water. If you’re worried about your water heater bursting or your basement leaking during a storm, then you would start it off in the dry state; if you want to monitor the water level in an aquarium, then you would start it in the wet state. Since I worry about a leaky basement when I’m not home, I set it up dry. Place the end of the probe on the floor where water is likely by attaching it to a wall with the double-sided tape. Because the probe’s wire is fairly long, the sensor/transmitter portion can be placed several feet away. Like the door sensor, it can be attached to a wall with either double-sided tape or screws.

Step 5: Configure devices and set up notification

Once all the devices are recognized and in place you can go ahead and configure their behavior with the PC. First you’ll want to use the device editor to change each device’s name from a product number to something that makes more sense like “kitchen camera” or “front door.” The camera can be adjusted by its video quality, contrast and brightness. Although improvements are slight and increasing, the video quality increases the file size of recorded video.

Using the event setup tool, you can direct how you want the devices to react to activity. I set up the water sensor to send an e-mail alert for wet situations. I configured the kitchen camera to snap a picture when the door sensor was tripped and to send the picture to my e-mail address. I configured the front camera to snap a picture whenever its motion detector was tripped by someone on the front porch, and it would then send me the picture. E-mail alerts can be set up by creating an SMPT profile using your emails outgoing SMPT server. (A smart addition to a security system would be Motorola’s wireless siren HMAD8000 for $59.99. With this device, you can configure the siren to sound whenever a sensor or camera’s motion detector is triggered.)

Once all of your devices and events are configured, click the arm button in the mail control panel of the program to set all of the devices into an active mode. Your PC must be on at all times for the system to work. Each time an event happens (a sensor is triggered, a picture or video is snapped) it’s automatically entered into the event log (a text list of all activities). You can video the recorded pictures or videos in the event archive. Be sure to clear the pictures out of the archives frequently or they’ll start to take up a lot of space. If you don’t want the system to monitor your home, just click the disarm button. You may wish to only arm the system when you’re out of the house or at night. You can also change the device characteristics easily if you want them to behave differently while you’re on vacation rather than when your just away for a few hours.

System requirements:

PC running Windows Me/2000/XP

Intel Pentium 2 or higher

CD-ROM drive

128 MB RAM

45 MB free hard drive space for program

500 MB free hard drive space for archives

USB port

Broadband connection for e-mail alerts