Sprocket Turner

LMAO - uh no, but we both know where I am now!!! We are going to have to get together this riding season here in Indiana. Perhaps brown county or something more central like Indy.

RobbieTunes

Vincennes?

Barrettscv 

I've caught intruders in my home twice!

The first was on a cold December night when I came home and found an empty car running in my driveway. I opened the car and put the ignition key in my pocket. I then saw the intruder searching and ransacking. He saw me and went out the back to a car that no longer could be used to getaway. He ended up going over the fence and into a branch of the Chicago river. Drenched, in sub-freezing & near-zero weather, he walked more than two miles and disappeared into the night.

My second intruder was a obvious drug user, white female. She showed up two days after my Cyclocross bike was taken of my back porch. I came in the door to find this person looking around. She was clever enough to claim that she was told to come in but entered the wrong residence. I didn't want to forcibly detain a female, so I used my phone to take her picture and let he go.

dweenk

The night test worked well, so I got two cameras and two 32g SD cards today. The cards should hold a months worth of photos (I'll test that), and should be able to cover all quadrants of the house as well as the garage door. I am more interested in capturing a photo of a person trespassing, casing, or trying to enter the house. I also believe that by state law I need to post a sign that states "This Property is Under Video Surveillance".

Ain't life grand.

3speedslow

Groundhog2

My home has only been broken into once in 50 years. The criminal knew we were absent because of fresh snow and NO driveway or door tracks. The @#$%^& lesft virtually every paper in the house (out of file cabinets, desks, etc) on the floor and took my rifle, my grandfather's pistol, an antique miniature pocket watch, a childhood chrome bank, and my Scouting days explorer's telescope. Except for the rifle every item taken was an heirloom and could not be replaced simply by spending money. That was 41 years ago next month and I would strangle the bastard to this day if I could ever face him. A van load of inner city residents were let out on our street that night, did their dirty work, and were picked up later that night by the van and taken back (we believe, to Wash DC.)
You will NEVER feel so violated in your entire life until something like that occurs !
p.s. the intruder carefully blocked our front door so no one could enter, came in via a broken window in the back, and exited out the back door into the woods. Strangely the fireplace tools were laid carefully on top of the dresser on newspapers to avoid scratching the surface it appeared. We think the thief had the fireplace tools for weapons while he ransacked the place. All the appearance of some "burglary pimp" having hauled a load of young people into the area. No one was ever apprehended.
Note: This forum is screwed up/crude compared to many better ones. You cannot tell here what post you are replying to. The titles do not show during your reply process, and every thread I have watched is flooded with unrelated nonsense. For all those reasons I rarely visit this forum. There HAS to be a better cyclist forum !!!

Groundhog2

I too live in Maryland and there is no state law requiring one to post a sign about ANYTHING, period. That is BS. Even if there was one, no one is dumb enough to feel compelled to comply with it.

Lemond1985

Caught any animals in the yard yet? Solve the mystery yet of "Who Dug Up The Flower Bed?" or "Who Whizzed on the Trash Can?" (hopefully it wasn't a family member). If you have night vision on the cameras, you'll probably see all kinds of nocturnal critters doing their thing.

ChrisWagner

Bummer.

Good info here > https://ipcamtalk.com/

dweenk

Ha! I've seen the neighbor's cat twice and one raccoon. I have me picking up the newspaper and the postman delivering mail, as well as my wife and me coming and going during the day. Birds however, do not trigger the camera. I feed birds, so lots of small birds fly back and forth across the yard. Perhaps they are too fast, too small, or too something else.

Lemond1985

Probably a good thing it's not too sensitive. My cameras are always going off when wind blows and moves branches around, and sometimes when little are birdies jumping and playing, if they're close enough. Cats don't set it off most of the time, but they're usually 40-50 feet away when they pass by.

Hopefully there's a setting to adjust sensitivity on your cameras, I can adjust it through software, but my program misses some things occasionally, and gets set off by lot of stuff I wish it wouldn't. So it's hit and miss, but generally pretty reliable, and I would rather have a few false alarms than miss something important.

greatscott

Geez that's bad, sorry that happened to you.

Going forward you need to take some steps to prevent it from happening again. If you don't have a deadbolt get one, and get one with the longest bolt called a grade 1 (grade 1 is actually difficult to find in home places but you should be able to find one), Schlage B660P is a very good dead bolt, it is keyed on both sides so when your home leave the key on the inside in the lock in case of fire you want to get out without trying to find a key, but having it keyed on both sides will hinder someone in getting out of the house with bigger stuff, but you do have to be more conscious when your inside vs the ones with internal levers. then you need to drive 3" to 3 1/2" inch wood screws into the striker plates of both the dead bolt and the regular lock, this will severely restrict jimmying the lock. Also if you want kick in strength drive in the same screws into the hinges that go into the door jam, it won't do any good to drive them into the door. Do this for all external doors, including any inside doors like mudroom doors that lead to an outside door. The same principle will work with French doors, those also have bolts that go into the top of the door jam and the into the floor, you need those 3" screws again; you also need those screws for both the locking mechanism and for the striker plate, but be careful to make sure that a 3" screw won't hit the glass or mess with the locking mechanism, so you may find that you might need shorter screws perhaps where the lock is but the striker plate may be ok with the 3" screws.

Windows are also easy to get in so you need to install window locks because the factory locks don't work at all, any home improvement place has an assortment of these locks and you have to figure out which ones will work with your style of windows. But with glass windows and doors those can be smashed if they can't get in using normal means, but there is film on the market you can either apply yourself or have it professionally installed that can keep the glass from breaking apart and allowing someone to get in, the glass will shatter but the film will hold in place, you can get tinted or non tinted.

If you have a sliding glass door you need to get some sort of rod that can fit into the channel behind door when it's closed and fit rather close. Also you need to put in about 6 screws into the top of the sliding door channel (open the door and put the screws into that portion of the channel) so that they stick down about 1/4 of an inch then slowly close the door, if the door hits the screw turn it about a 1/2 turn and retest and keep doing that till you can close the door. The idea of the screws is so that a criminal can't left the door up and out of of the channel, and two screws could be bent by a stronger crook but 6 he won't be able to.

I'm not a fan of alarm systems because any decent criminal will know he has at least 3 minutes to get in get stuff and leave before the cops get there, if you don't think that's a lot of time, try an experiment, open your front door run to your bedroom, gather a few things and run out the door, you can do that easily in a minute, two at tops. Most criminals know people keep their valuables in their bedrooms, you may want to consider a different room. Plus if you put alarm stickers on windows it screams to criminals you have something valuable and you're protecting it, now they want it. Also stupid alarm places install the alarm box in a centrally located closet, criminals know this, so they find the box and disarm it; real sophisticated criminals even have short range cell phone jammers that prevent the cell phone alarm system from phoning the cops, and they will cut the cable outside your house for your computer system so any alarm system using a modem to call the police is also dead, so there goes all that expensive automated communication systems to call the cops.

If you have small but expensive jewelry you can make a dummy wall outlet to look like a real one and put your stuff in there, see this: If you have a very sturdy gun safe bolted into the floor that works really well too for valuables, but those little security boxes can simply be grapped and taken out of the house to break into later.

Jeff Wills

I had that happen a couple nights ago. I woke up at 3AM to the weirdest squealing in the back yard. When I turned on the lights I saw a couple raccoons doing... well... doing it.

I guess I'll have a bunch of little raccoons hanging out in a couple months.

Lemond1985

I imagine they didn't even take their masks off first. Sickos. Gonna have to look that up on YouTube and see for myself just how unbearably offensive raccoon sex really is. BRB.

RobbieTunes

Be careful. Unlike most of their ilk, raccons have no issues nesting in fiberglass insulation, and their fecal matter is a very unique thing to smell.

Also, they are fairly common rabies carriers.

RobbieTunes

They wanted to keep it informal. No emotional attachments. And after all, it is Vancouver.

RobbieTunes

Well, you know the solution, right?

dweenk

I had to go back to the post that you quoted. The groundhog must have had a worse day than I had last Tuesday. Sounds like a very angry person.

We will recover. The stuff that was taken is just stuff, and we are insured. We are OK and only have to deal with identity papers, which is the biggest PITA. I am sure that many have suffered worse.

Groundhog2

I sure do.

Groundhog2

No anger involved. Just calling a spade a spade.

dweenk

Sometimes I mistake frankness for anger - it's okay.

Riveting

Checkout WyzeCam .com for a $20 WiFi camera, and FREE fully featured motion-sensing software, with no hidden fees.

And then put signs on all doors that say "SMILE! Your face is being uploaded to the cloud." I have one of those cams pointed out my slider door, as well as one keeping guard of my bike collection in the garage.

dweenk

I would rather keep the data home. When it goes outside of your domain, there are all sorts of negatives. I think where the devices are being built, and I am loath to provide information to any business that I must deal with (although I may have provided more info to BF than I intended).

I am not a hermit or a Luddite, just trying to be careful.

Riveting

The idea of putting and advertising that the video footage is on the cloud, is to disuade the potential burglar from breaking in, and then stealing or smashing your PC that they believe has the video footage with their face on it.

base2 

I caught a tweaker in my driveway while I was on the far side of a retaining wall stacking blocks. He very obviously panicked when I approached to address him. He feigned an over heating radiator. So, I handed him a garden hose. He sprayed down the engine compartment & asked about the local autopart store. I gave the directions & he beat feet going the wrong way. What he was especially nervous about was the death grip I had on a 16oz framing hammer cocked at the ready. I pummeled his skull so many times in my dreams & I was waiting for an opportunity, any excuse, whatsoever to do it. He was smart to grab his girl who was paralyzed by fear & get lost.

A few months later, a similar situation occured with a similar overheating radiator excuse to my next door neighbor. Different tweakers, but I had a hundred foot hose, so I "helped" the so-called "stranded motorists." My neighbors house is a fortress of cameras, but intervention by this nosey neighbor averted a bad situation.

Another time, I found a man in my garage. I came around the corner and watched him looking at my cameras scoping out the contents. I ran him off & told him to get lost. About 3 hours later, he returned with his friend. People become really very agreeable when confronted by a naked in an open bathrobe holding a loaded shotgun. I had tire marks in my driveway for about 3 months from the guy hitting reverse & stepping on the accelerator.

My junkie neighbor stole a bunch of gas cans, a stereo, some miscellaneous items. I complained about it to the people he lived with. In the end, I hooked up a camera directly to a tv and left the tv on so he could see me recording him as he rummaged my stuff. He must've figured out I was playing it cool, but he was pushing his luck.

My wife had a wally-world bike stolen. Of course, it was the one with air in the tires...

On another occasion, I had a Univega stolen. I was home & heard the freewheel clickity as the thief rode away.

I had a set of snow tires get stolen by a construction worker building a house on the other side of the street. I didn't do anything, his pickup looked like a jalopy. I chalked it up to desperation.

Never once did I call the cops. The last thing I need is paperwork for a bunch of stuff the cops won't do anything about. I learned that after I had $3000 in tools stolen by a neighbor who was a truck driver. The cops didn't even bother with fingerprints. I never saw Sam again...Dirtbag.

Further, when I had my car prowled & my glovebox pryed open with a crowbar, I had to beg the dis-interested cop to take a report. He got one lousy indeterminant print.

I gaurentee you this though, if I actually catch an intruder in my living room, when my family is home, someone is going to be filing a missing persons report. As far as I'm concerned, the intruder just willed himself out of existance. Let's hope the local crime wave remains over. It's been 3 or 4 years since any real incident.

Op: What I'm trying to say is don't panic. It happens to everybody. Cameras & security systems are reactive. Often that footage is useless. That sign in the front yard advertises that you have stuff worth taking. Just play it cool & get the home insurace involved. The documents are the greatest risk of peril. The jewelry isn't a loss if insurance works as it is supposed to.

I hope you feel better.