From: John De Armond Subject: Re: Hott Rod electric water heating element Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 02:21:40 EDT Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Steve Wolf wrote: > > I sure recommend it! > > See http://www.wolfelectric.com/family/motorhome under approrpriate hot water > topics. I did have an element fail and they replaced it as per their > warranty. Cost me, I think, $7.50. > > Steve Hey, I LIKE your web page. Especially the "It ISN'T brain surgery" part :-) About your burglar alarm. I help a friend of mine who has a burglar alarm business so I end up seeing a lot of gadgets. Check this out: http://neonjohn.4mg.com/files/misc/motion_detector.jpg. This is a motion detector that is almost completely immune to tripping from the motion of pets. I've been testing this unit for several months for my friend. I have a large cat who regards every single surface in my house as his playground. I have the detector set up looking out across one of his favorite play areas. It is hooked up to a counter that will register each alarm. So far in 6 months, no false alarms. It costs about $80 and is available from just about any alarm installer. Second tip. I have a wireless remote hooked to my alarm so that I can arm and disarm it from a pocket transmitter. I used one of those high security "tumbler" units that changes the code on each actuation. My alarm panel allows me to arm and disarm the system with a contact closure to a specified alarm channel. That means I push the button to arm, push it again to disarm. I'm going to add this same system to my MH when I get time. Third tip. I use a surplus police siren for the audible alarm. The 100 watt speaker is mounted inside. It is designed to make the interior uninhabitable. This is very effective at stopping a "smash and grab" burglar who would not be deterred by a simple alarm. I have this in my restaurant and another in my concession trailer. A smash and grabber learned the hard way about the restaurant system. Tossed a brick through the window and then cut himself on the glass so we had a nice blood trail. Got about 20 feet inside and then turned and ran. The QUIETEST place in my restaurant registers 140 db on my decibel meter. In the concession trailer it pegs the meter. I bought my siren at a hamfest for about $20. I figured this out after a smash and grab artist grabbed the cash register out of my previous restaurant despite a monitored alarm system. PS: Being a ham, you might enjoy http://neonjohn.4mg.com/files/misc/tower1.jpg through tower3.jpg. These are photos of our digital radio club mounting a refrigerator on the 1000 ft tower of Chan 11 in Atlanta. Inside the fridge was a PC running Karn Kode and some 56kb RF modems. This was a high speed packet switch that covered all of metro Atlanta. BTW, if you get a "forbidden" when clicking on the above URLs, just go in through http://neonjohn.4mg.com and click through the directories. This site sometimes won't let you click right in because they want to force you to read their banner ads. *Sigh* Guess that's the price of a free web page. John From: John De Armond Subject: Re: Hott Rod electric water heating element Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 21:04:05 EDT Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Supertomm@webtv.net wrote: > > Hi, John, > > > Was fascinated by your motion detector inside alarm information. > Although obviously cat-proof, what about adults who get up in the middle > of the night for a "pee-call"? Oh, this would only be for when I'm gone. When we're in the RV, the burglar alarm is my Cold .45 auto and my wife's Lady Colt .38 :-) > We don't have an inside alarm, but would like to find one -- but > one that I won't set off accidentally. OK, but think this through a little. I'm an NRA certified firearms and self-protection instructor so this topic is near and dear to my heart. An alarm might seem desirable at first but consider what happens when it goes off. If you're lucky, the perp is scared off and runs. But what if he isn't or what if he gets disoriented and can't run. Now you have a huge racket going off in the house (or MH), you can't hear the perp's movements or even talk with your spouse and the perp is either really pissed or scared sh*tless, depending on his predisposition. You've given up your element of surprise plus there is bedlam. And in your MH, assuming the perp is coming in through the door, all an alarm would do is tell you what you already know - you have no escape path and you're in deep doodoo. Or a target-rich environment :-) If I was a very deep sleeper so that I'd have to worry about not waking up at the sound of an intruder in my MH, I think I'd want a quiet alarm, perhaps a vibrator, that would wake me but not let the perp know I'm awake. I'd probably set up some door switches (especially if I had a basement) and leave it at that. Probably the single best thing you can do in camp for security is to get and use some motion-sensing lights. These will scare the crap out of even an innocent person who wanders into your camp. I installed a system of these around my BBQ restaurant and completely stopped the petty larceny that had become a problem. People had been loading up their pickup trucks with my hickory wood! These lights are cheap at Lowe's et al and work very well. One at your door and perhaps one on the opposite side of the MH would do the trick. If you want one that runs off of 12 volts, a burglar alarm PIR sensor will work fine for that application. They're designed to run on 24 volts AC but I've found them to work just fine on 12 VDC. Funny story: My restaurant straddles US 11 with the dining room on one side and the pit and storage on the other. I have a 1500 watt quartz-halogen light on top of the restaurant that shines on the pit and wood pile. It wired into a motion sensor near the pit. It is normally pretty dark out there otherwise. One night a day or two after I installed this setup, I was in the restaurant late and I saw a cop car rolling up beside the pit. They like to park there to do paperwork. Just as he came to a stop, his car tripped the motion detector. Instant daylight! He jumped so hard that his head poked the roof of the patrol car! He started darting his eyes around like he was under assault. When he saw me standing in the front window laughing my butt off, he gave me one of those "paybacks are hell looks", complete with the shaking finger :-) If it scared the cop that bad, consider what it does to the sot intent on stealing wood! > The wireless remote for the alarm sounds like a handy addition. Yeah, I really like it. At my restaurant, I use an FBII top of the line alarm panel. One capability it has is to allow each alarm channel to be programmed as to how many actuations in how much time it takes to constitute an alarm. For example, the cheap PIRs I used will sometimes "flicker" from hot air currents when the heat turns on or whatnot, which would cause a false alarm. I simply program the panel to require two contact closures within a specified time period before an alarm is recognized. This completely and totally eliminates false alarms. This feature also is an added bit of security on the wireless remote. Even though I use a high security remote, I wasn't completely comfortable. So I programmed the input to require multiple button pushes within a certain period of time before it will disarm. I specified the parameters so that it takes some practice to get the right number of button pushes done within the time window. That would make it very had for someone to just guess - if they even knew it was necessary. I have a tiny little LED mounted in a fairly hidden location but where I can see it from the outside. This LED is on when the system is armed. That way I know positively that I've armed or disarmed the system. > And the surplus police siren for the alarm should get the attention of > any "good guys" in the area, and scare heck out of the "bad guy(s)" > > > So how will you prevent false alarms, and what will you use for > the siren, when you mount this is in your MH ? Or will you just plan to > use it just for outside motions and vibrations ? I'll use another police siren. I bought several in a box at a hamfest. I'll probably mount the amplifier box in a cabinet somewhere or maybe under the hood and hide the speaker wherever I can find space. This will strictly be for use when we're gone or when the MH is parked at the restaurant. I'll use a pet resistant motion sensor inside (cuz we take our cat with us) and put some switches on the hood and hatches. The combination of passive infrared and microwaves pretty much eliminates false alarms from the motion sensor. > Final shot: Enjoy reading your Posts (Postings? I'm a novice on > the web.) on the various topics of this NG. Thank you again! John |
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