swirt
Forum founder. Former Owner.
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This came up in one of the other threads. We have a driveway alarm (Reporter - Wireless Alert ) that that alerts us to people pulling into our driveway or parking area. It consists of a receiver that plugs in at the house and a motion detector outside that sends a radio signal to the receiver when it is triggered.
We use it because my office is in the basement and so is my workshop so it gives me a few extra seconds to get upstairs and get the dog put into the back before they knock on the door and he starts barking (he typically only barks if someone knocks) So it lets me intercept them before they knock and I can usually meet them in the parking area with their paperwork for check-in.
I don't recommend it if you have a lot of traffic or people walking in or around your driveway entrance as you may get a lot of false alarms, but out here in the country, the only people pulling in are either guests, or deliveries.
We unplug the alarm after all of our check-ins have arrived...we don't need to know about their comings and goings after that.
In our particular case, our parking area is a little oddly shaped so we have an extra motion detector that talks to the same receiver.
Overall it works pretty well. Occasionally it stops alerting us to cars and it either means the batteries in the detector are dead (we only need to change them once a year (4-AA) ) or spiders have built too thick a web in the opening of the detector so I have to go out with a q-tip and wipe out the cobwebs.
We've had ours for 6 years now and it is still working fine.
We use it because my office is in the basement and so is my workshop so it gives me a few extra seconds to get upstairs and get the dog put into the back before they knock on the door and he starts barking (he typically only barks if someone knocks) So it lets me intercept them before they knock and I can usually meet them in the parking area with their paperwork for check-in.
I don't recommend it if you have a lot of traffic or people walking in or around your driveway entrance as you may get a lot of false alarms, but out here in the country, the only people pulling in are either guests, or deliveries.
We unplug the alarm after all of our check-ins have arrived...we don't need to know about their comings and goings after that.
In our particular case, our parking area is a little oddly shaped so we have an extra motion detector that talks to the same receiver.
Overall it works pretty well. Occasionally it stops alerting us to cars and it either means the batteries in the detector are dead (we only need to change them once a year (4-AA) ) or spiders have built too thick a web in the opening of the detector so I have to go out with a q-tip and wipe out the cobwebs.
We've had ours for 6 years now and it is still working fine.