Guard your home with your PC

Guard your home with your PC

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta

As you always do, before your left your house this morning you
made sure that you had securely locked all doors and windows.
However, when you came home after a long day at work, you got a
really nasty surprise. The front door was not damaged, there was
no sign of forced entry. But, inside, it was a mess. Obviously,
someone had been there while you were away.

There are several ways to prevent this kind of scenario from
happening. A non-technology-based solution is to keep a vicious
dog at home. However, burglars sometimes have the heart to poison
your pet in order to get access to your bedroom, where you keep
your cash and jewelry.

Another common type of protection is to install an alarm
system. When a wired door or window is opened while the system is
on, a loud noise is emitted. You can add to your alarm system
what is called a "screamer" to get the burglar running away at
top speed. Unfortunately, the high-decibel noise will continue
until the system is turned off, often long after the burglars
have disappeared. Who will turn it off if you are not there?
Besides, sophisticated burglars of today may use a radio-
frequency jammer to disable your system.

Other home security systems, such as the Night and Day home
alarm system offered by Indonesian company Afiscom, will
automatically send an alert message to your cell phone or fixed
phone. You have to enter the same numbers you used to configure
the system, and it will dial them in turn until the alert is
delivered. At least it makes you aware that something has
happened at home.

A better option is to sign a contract with a home security
company. They will install a monitoring system in your home,
which is linked 24 hours a day to their command center. This
system will alert them if something suspicious is taking place at
home. The company can then alert the police or quickly dispatch
their own security personnel to your home to check it out. This
is quite an effective protection for your property, although it
will cost you a premium.

If you have a home computer with a broadband connection to the
Internet, you actually have a low-cost home security system. It
is not as effective as a contract with a security company, of
course, but it costs a lot less.

What you need to do is place one or more covert cameras in
strategic places inside your house. There is plenty of choice
when it comes to hidden cameras. They can be disguised in a
clock, in a boombox or in a decoration strategically placed in
your living room. Go to spytown.com/covertcameras.html if you
want to see the cameras that SpyTown sells. Wireless cameras are
preferable. All you need to do is connect these covert cameras to
your home computer, which must be turned on all the time.

There are various software programs that can capture the image
and detect motions. One of them is Gotcha! (www.gotchanow.com).
When the software detects something suspicious, it will notify
you. It can even e-mail you the image that it captured when
someone rang your doorbell. A similar product is i-Catcher Sentry
(www.icode.co.uk/icatcher/). Both can record images for
investigation purposes.

Some sophisticated remote monitoring systems allow you to tilt
and pan the camera from a remote computer. Go to
//208.255.86.12/ViewerFrame?Mode=Motion if you want to see this
in action. To enter, use the word "guest" (without the quotation
marks) as the name, and "demo" as the password.

Complete home security systems are also available on the
market. Visual Security (www.visualsecurity.com), for example,
offers a complete package that it calls Visual Sentry. These
packages are not available here in Jakarta, unfortunately, but if
you want to have some fun, then you can build your own PC-based
home security system. Just remember that no single security
method can offer the ultimate protection. If you live in Jakarta,
a lot of prayer and careful judgment must also be added to your
daily home security menu.