Should Every Alarm System Have External Sensors In SEN’s Opinion – What Are The Benefits?
Should Every Alarm System Have External Sensors – Should every alarm system feature external alarm sensors? We’d say yes, wherever possible.
Obviously, some applications – bald face terraces or street shopfronts for example – don’t lend themselves to perimeter detection but any sites that feature a physically delineated sterile zone – walled courtyards or backyards – will benefit from external detection.
There are caveats. You don’t want legitimate mail, parcel deliveries or meter readers to get homeowners’ hearts racing with shrill alarm activations. That makes placement important. You might allow unfettered access to the front verandah where parcels can be left in safety while securing side access points intruders might sneak through.
Front of house might be secured externally by movement detection rules in doorbells or integrated surveillance cameras, as well as by vibration sensors, reeds, glassbreaks and volumetrics covering the front entrance from the inside.
As regular readers of SEN know, we favour sensors with integrated cameras that allow immediate triage of alarm events. However, experience with high end external curtain sensors installed in sterile walled yards shows that there are applications that will prove very stable to a quality sensor.
There will be no false alarms at all, and any activations will be intrusion events – or unexpected visitors. A combination of quality sensors and a remotely accessible CCTV system with sufficient camera coverage communicating via an utterly dependable network is the gold standard, in our opinion.
You can discover more about Risco from LSC here and read more about PowerG from BGW Technologies here. More SEN news here.
“Should Every Alarm System Have External Sensors In SEN’s Opinion – What Are The Benefits?”
Early Warning can be an advantage especially linked to CCTV and analytics.
Using cameras to detect people & vehicles linked with beams or other would reduce false alarms but you are likely to get them still – legitimate alarms for the friendlies basically.
Its a suck it and see with some installations.
You’re quite right, David. Personally, I find whichever I have – sensor images or CCTV – I look at both. I’d say the best quality sensors combined with CCTV coverage perform best but it’s always great to get those few frames that confirm a false alarm and take the guesswork out of it within the first 30 seconds of an alarm event.