Posted: 5/3/2012 3:34:21 PM EDT
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I want to add a Driveway Alert System and am looking for suggestions.
MUST BE MURS compatible so it has better range & I can get the alarm on my HT when I'm away from the monitor in the house. Other than that, dependability and not going off every time the wind blows like the HF brand does would be nice. I haven't found much on the topic, but it looks like the Dakota brand has the most advertisement. |
| I have DakotaAlert MURS transmitters on my feeders. I am getting about three months to a set of batteries, but between pigs, deer, and raccoons, the thing is going off many times per night. I suspect it would last much longer on an actual driveway. My river feeder is about a 1/3 mile from the cabin and the signal is load & clear. |
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I have DakotaAlert MURS transmitters on my feeders. I am getting about three months to a set of batteries, but between pigs, deer, and raccoons, the thing is going off many times per night. I suspect it would last much longer on an actual driveway. My river feeder is about a 1/3 mile from the cabin and the signal is load & clear. I get about 8 months on my driveway. |
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hey guys. besides the murs ones. And not to hi jack spear's topic. But ive been milling over the basic IR kinda drive way alarm i guess they are. I want something to give a basic alarm if someone passes a gate or the driveway. but like spear said not something that will go off if a bird flys past it. |
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The antenna on mine connects with what I think is called a BCN connector, so you could easily connect an external antenna. How much range are you needing? It's a BNC connector & they are pretty common antenna connectors. Thanks, that's the info I was looking for. At most, I'm looking at about a 1/2 mile range. I'm sure those units are pretty low power, but if I can put an external antenna 10 - 15 feet in the air, that should be no problem at all even on a few milliwatts. It looks like the DakotaAlert is the way to go. |
| MURS is limited to 2 watt...so its high power compared to many other similar unlicensed bands. I'm not sure what the driveway alerts put out, but I'm getting good receptions at about 1/3 mile through heavy woods...but I'm way the F out in the middle of nowhere, so the noise floor is low. You may find you don't need the external antenna. |
| Neighbor uses 3 German Shepard's. The smallest is at least 100 pounds. Don't have to worry about batteries, solar flares, or the power going out. Thieves, salesmen, trespassers, Idiots asking to hunt, etc. Heck I know the guy and his dogs and I won't get out of the car unless he's around. |
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hey guys. besides the murs ones. And not to hi jack spear's topic. But ive been milling over the basic IR kinda drive way alarm i guess they are. I want something to give a basic alarm if someone passes a gate or the driveway. but like spear said not something that will go off if a bird flys past it. From what I've read, it looks like DakotaAlert and Chamberlain are the top two. They both have non-MURS PIR sensors as well as magnetic pickups &/or rubber hose that only a car will set off. (Like the old gas station hose that rang a bell.) I would prefer an IR beam, like you use to find in the front door of businesses years ago, so only something actually breaking the beam will set it off, but I didn't find one with a MURS transmitter. ...Maybe I need to break out the "electronic projects" book & a soldering iron and build one. |
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Quoted: I want to add a Driveway Alert System and am looking for suggestions. MUST BE MURS compatible so it has better range & I can get the alarm on my HT when I'm away from the monitor in the house. Other than that, dependability and not going off every time the wind blows like the HF brand does would be nice. I haven't found much on the topic, but it looks like the Dakota brand has the most advertisement. Over use of obscure acronyms. Your post has it. 
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I want to add a Driveway Alert System and am looking for suggestions. MUST BE MURS compatible so it has better range & I can get the alarm on my HT when I'm away from the monitor in the house. Other than that, dependability and not going off every time the wind blows like the HF brand does would be nice. I haven't found much on the topic, but it looks like the Dakota brand has the most advertisement. Over use of obscure acronyms. Your post has it. If you are into radios at all none of them are obscure |
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I want to add a Driveway Alert System and am looking for suggestions. MUST BE MURS compatible so it has better range & I can get the alarm on my HT when I'm away from the monitor in the house. Other than that, dependability and not going off every time the wind blows like the HF brand does would be nice. I haven't found much on the topic, but it looks like the Dakota brand has the most advertisement. Over use of obscure acronyms. Your post has it. MURS = Multi-Use Radio Service HT = Handi Talkie, i.e. walkie talkie, i.e. WT, i.e. handheld radio HF = Harbor Freight, i.e. retailer of cheap Chinese tools, i.e. my favorite place to blow a few bucks and use coupons 
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Do you have LOS to the driveway entry point? ETA: also, do you have power down at your entry gate? LOS (Line Of Sight) = Yes Power = No. But it does get full sunlight so a solar panel & battery is an option. And you're down in Florida, right? So solar might work (closer to the equator = Solar mo' betta) How much are you looking to spend? |
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UPDATE:
I went with the Dakota Alert. Seems to be very well made and ,so far, works great. Since I didn't want it quite so obvious, I built a "bird house" out of some scrap lumber I had laying around, mounted it on a fence post near the end of my driveway, and put the sensor in it. Since there was a shiny chrome plated antenna sticking out of the top, I used a piece of 1/2" PVC pipe with a cap to cover the antenna. It's all painted flat O.D. green and blends in pretty good with the post. The only problem that I have noticed so far is that during heavy rain, the signal is noticably weaker. The unit is designed for outdoor use and is "waterproof" so I'm not really sure what's going on. It may be that the unit is very low power & the rainfall is attenuating the signal or there could be some water gathering around the antenna base causing the issue. The only other issue I can find is that when bambi decides to walk down my drive and a mans voice starts saying "Alert zone one! Alert zone one! Alert zone one! " at 3am in my bedroom, the adrenaline dump will make it difficult to go back to sleep for an hour or two.  
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UPDATE: I went with the Dakota Alert. Seems to be very well made and ,so far, works great. Since I didn't want it quite so obvious, I built a "bird house" out of some scrap lumber I had laying around, mounted it on a fence post near the end of my driveway, and put the sensor in it. Since there was a shiny chrome plated antenna sticking out of the top, I used a piece of 1/2" PVC pipe with a cap to cover the antenna. It's all painted flat O.D. green and blends in pretty good with the post. The only problem that I have noticed so far is that during heavy rain, the signal is noticably weaker. The unit is designed for outdoor use and is "waterproof" so I'm not really sure what's going on. It may be that the unit is very low power & the rainfall is attenuating the signal or there could be some water gathering around the antenna base causing the issue. The only other issue I can find is that when bambi decides to walk down my drive and a mans voice starts saying "Alert zone one! Alert zone one! Alert zone one! " at 3am in my bedroom, the adrenaline dump will make it difficult to go back to sleep for an hour or two.
If you have the MURS one, the signal is a watt or two. That's a lot nearby. Maybe add an antenna to your receiver. Their MURS receiver is pretty good too. As far as the antenna in the bird feeder, you can get a BNC conx and use a piece of wire cut to abt 17 inches and let it dangle. Re Bambi, that's why you should have gotten the buriable sensor to detect masses of moving metal. 
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That Dakota uses 6 or 8 AA's IIRC. You could wire into it the same number of D cells in external R-S holders and not have to fiddle with batteries so often. Cameras and access points can run off 12VDC too. I'd bury a deep cycle battery, put up a solar panel, and power the whole mess. |
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That Dakota uses 6 or 8 AA's IIRC. You could wire into it the same number of D cells in external R-S holders and not have to fiddle with batteries so often. Cameras and access points can run off 12VDC too. I'd bury a deep cycle battery, put up a solar panel, and power the whole mess. If a constant significant drain like a cam, that's what I'd do too... |
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That Dakota uses 6 or 8 AA's IIRC. You could wire into it the same number of D cells in external R-S holders and not have to fiddle with batteries so often. Cameras and access points can run off 12VDC too. I'd bury a deep cycle battery, put up a solar panel, and power the whole mess. Need to do just this... did you cover this in your other threads or have any more info? |
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That Dakota uses 6 or 8 AA's IIRC. You could wire into it the same number of D cells in external R-S holders and not have to fiddle with batteries so often. Cameras and access points can run off 12VDC too. I'd bury a deep cycle battery, put up a solar panel, and power the whole mess. Need to do just this... did you cover this in your other threads or have any more info? I've not put up a self-contained solar setup yet (because all of the places where I've installed cameras have power), but I have installed a self-contained camera/AP setup and run everything off of a 12VDC power supply. The power-supply part of the setup is fairly trivial. This page shows such a setup. When you look at the picture below, realize that everything in that box runs off that long rectangular 12VDC PSU in the bottom of that enclosure. If you were running everything off a deep-cycle battery, you could omit that power supply, and simply direct-wire it to your battery. 
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If you didn't want to go to the trouble of burying a large battery, it looks like a couple of these small SLA batteries would fit into Doc's enclosure above:
ETA: Those came out of some smaller rack mount UPS units at work-we replace them annually. We buy our replacement batteries here: http://www.gruberpower.com/ ETAA: Given the modest power drain, it would be very straightforward to add a small solar maintainer. |
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If you didn't want to go to the trouble of burying a large battery, it looks like a couple of these small SLA batteries would fit into Doc's enclosure above: http://home.comcast.net/~cjan99999/APC_Battery1.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~cjan99999/APC_Battery2.jpg ETA: Those came out of some smaller rack mount UPS units at work-we replace them annually. We buy our replacement batteries here: http://www.gruberpower.com/ ETAA: Given the modest power drain, it would be very straightforward to add a small solar maintainer. +1 Gruber Power is the bomb. I get all my UPS and AGM batteries there. |
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Not to sidetrack the thread, but I completely agree with you about Gruber Power. We buy our larger AGM batteries by the pallet. A while back a pallet was delivered to our loading dock, and upon getting it unwrapped we discovered that many of the batteries were cracked-we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars worth of batteries here. Apparently the pallet was dropped somewhere along the line. I called Gruber, and within an HOUR they had a replacement pallet rolling with FedEx Custom Critical. They weren't interested in assigning blame or passing the buck-they just wanted to get us our replacements fast. In their words "we have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong and deal with insurance claims, but that's not going to help you in the meantime".
So yeah, I'm a fan
Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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Quoted: My driveway alarm is a 115lb GSD/Great Dane mix. Nothing moves outside without him knowing. Just saying. That was my first thought as well. My roomate had a Rottweiler that barked loudly at night three times in the 4 years I lived there. There was an intruder on the 1-acre property all three times. And I highly doubt there was ever another night when that was the case. |
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Not to sidetrack the thread, but I completely agree with you about Gruber Power. We buy our larger AGM batteries by the pallet. A while back a pallet was delivered to our loading dock, and upon getting it unwrapped we discovered that many of the batteries were cracked-we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars worth of batteries here. Apparently the pallet was dropped somewhere along the line. I called Gruber, and within an HOUR they had a replacement pallet rolling with FedEx Custom Critical. They weren't interested in assigning blame or passing the buck-they just wanted to get us our replacements fast. In their words "we have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong and deal with insurance claims, but that's not going to help you in the meantime". So yeah, I'm a fan
Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile Me too. I don't maintain nearly the network infrastructure that you do, but I probably have close to a dozen UPSs that I'm responsible for... and Gruber power supplies batteries for ALL of them. Between them and Thomas Distributing, I never want for batteries. |
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Re Bambi, that's why you should have gotten the buriable sensor to detect masses of moving metal.
But that misses folks on foot, would it not? Correct. I definitely want to know if someone is coming down the drive on foot so I'll just have to deal with the occasional false alarm during the night. Quoted:
Now you just need a remote camera down there so you can see what's up. I'm going to have to start looking for a decent outdoor NV or low light camera now. I had fairly good moonlight last night when the alarm went off, but I couldn't see anything at the sensor from a house window. Had anything larger than a cat come down the drive, I think I would have seen it once it got closer. A camera or two would make it a lot easier to check plus I could record any motion with Luxriot for when I'm not home. |
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Suggestions:
Two of these should give you a rock-solid wifi bridge/link to your entry gate. 
They only consume about eight watts of power, so you could run one of those down at your entry gate (along with the camera of your choice), and it'll only drain about 6-700mA of juice. Add in an IR illuminator, a camera, and that MURS detector. You could do it all with Solar + battery. Like so: Wifi bridge: 8 watts Acti ACM-7411: 12 watts max IR illuminator: 2-3 watts MURS detector: (dunno, but probably < 1 watt). So we're probably looking at a max current draw of 2A at 12VDC. Figure 12 hours of dusk/darkness per day, and at 2A, you need at least 24AH of battery capacity for one night (you obviously want a larger battery, as deeply discharging a battery shortens its service life, even in deep-cycle batteries). I'd get a >30AH battery, and use two of them, in case you had a rainy day or some such. You'll need enough solar power to run everything during the day, and to also charge the battery... so I'd get a 60 Watt panel minimum, bearing in mind that with dirt/dust accumulating on the panel, partly-cloudy days, inefficiencies in the system, etc, you might need to upsize that panel. Bear in mind, I'm not a pro at this, but that's my rookie back-of-the-envelope calculation. |