The Global Community for Sustainable Energy Professionals
Suppose that we have a home with an autonomous burglar alarm system. When a burglar alarm is triggered, this system will autonomously sound the outdoor alarm and/or generate a “silent” alarm (telephone or wireless) to a control centre. If we also make a contact to the integrated home system at that time, it can respond appropriately. Burglars concentrate a lot in their activities. For example, visual concentration because they prefer to work in the dark using a torch. There is also audio concentration. The burglar listens in all silence for noise signals that can give him information about whether somebody is coming down stairs, or if perhaps a car has driven into the drive. If we can break this concentration, the burglar no longer has any control over the situation. As he does not want to be recognised and does not want to be caught, he will quickly leave the home, possibly without any stolen items.
Break the concentration of the burglar, he will be startled and quickly leave the home. (Illustration source: DK Design)
We can break this concentration in a number of ways. First of all we can switch on a lot of lighting, the visual concentration is then immediately broken. We can also flash the outside lighting in order to indicate to the police and neighbours that something is wrong. We can raise the closed roll-down shutters. The effect of this is that the burglar can now be seen from outside. He does not like that. Certain people choose to roll the shutters down as they want to catch the burglar. Remember however that if you do that when people are at home, the burglary can quickly become a hostage situation. The burglar will use all means to get out of the home. The risk of damage to the home will be even greater. In order to break his audio concentration, the audio distribution system can be switched on at a high volume.
When there is no burglary, the integrated home system can act preventively. If we are not at home, and even at certain times when we are asleep, we can use activity simulation. This gives the appearance to the outside world that there are people at home and there is human activity. Integrated home systems often do this with clock functions.
