Just pinging in the rain
I finally got my security system to work.
It had been very intermittent and I got a bit pissed off with it. It kept disconnecting itself which sort of defeated the whole purpose of it. I can hardly stick a notice on my gate – “Please do not burgle unless the camera is active”?
I started playing around with installing another wifi network in the garage and the damn thing worked, despite failing on all my previous attempts. Why something doesn’t work and then suddenly works for no apparent reason is beyond me. I think it was just testing my patience.
Every time there is an “event” my phone pings and the system starts recording. Great? Not so great…..
The first drawback is very minor. There is a time lag of a few seconds on the system, so by the time it has alerted me that someone is coming, they are already at the back door. Disconcerting but trivial.
The second drawback is not so trivial. Just take a peek at the timeline for the last 24 hours –
Each orange line is an event. The two on the left show myself going to and coming back from the shops. The next two are Daughter arriving and then departing an hour later at a quarter to nine. Then at nine thirty all hell breaks loose and the fucking thing goes into a frenzy with a couple of hundred alerts. I have to switch my phone off or the fucking pinging would keep me awake all night.
So am I being burgled constantly from half nine to around five in the morning? Am I holding an all night rave in the garden? No. It’s fucking rain. I assume that it just takes a couple of large raindrops to reflect the infra-red which of course triggers the floodlights. Each following raindrop is now floodlit so there is now constant motion in the front garden [so far as the camera is concerned].
It actually acts as quite a neat rainfall recorder?
Great! Give your data to the IPCC – they'll make something of it beyond your wildest imagination.
😉
They would just make out that I would be the sole cause of Warble Gloaming. Then I'd have that Swedish kid stuck on my doorstep.
That would be good for the rest of us?
😉
So fit a rainshield over the sensor Simples.
Or….. not so Simples ?
"…I assume that it just takes a couple of large raindrops to reflect the infra-red which of course triggers the floodlights. Each following raindrop is now floodlit so there is now constant motion in the front garden [so far as the camera is concerned]…"
A rain shield will not help if the reflection from the rain drops "triggers the floodlights" not raindrops hitting the camera lens.
The shield would have to be a few feet deep. An existing shield keeps the lens dry but that's all.
Last night it went off repeatedly – a fucking spider built a web and was very active!
On the same note; Why does my downstairs toilet not flush and then suddenly flushes for no apparent reason? I think it's it's universal no matter what it is.
Just be grateful that it flushes sometimes?
Got it fixed. Required a new toilet and 2 days worth of plumbers. Appears that the outside sewer pipe leading to the sewer main was full of sh*t and various rags and such from the previous owners. The bill is going to be horrendous.