DIY – Designing Your Alarm System – Step 1

Designing Your Home Security System
Monitor or not to Monitor
POTS Line
VOIP
Cell
Home Automation
Choosing your Brand of Home Security
DIY or Professional Installation
Designing Your Home Security SystemWhen it comes to home security there are a lot of things to consider. You must remember that you are installing a security system so that you can protect your family and your processions.What does an Alarm System do?An alarm system does all of the following depending on the equipment that you choose:

Notify you of doors or windows that are opened

Notify you if windows are broken

Notify you of movement inside your home
These are all things that would be caused by an unwanted intruder but there are other things that can bring harm to your family or your home. Home Security Systems can also provide notifications for the following:

Early warning of a fire

Early warning of Carbon Monoxide gases

Early warning of freezing

Early warning of flooding
There are multiple levels of protection that you must consider when you are designing your alarm system. If you consider that 50-60% of burglaries happen by the intruder breaking through the front or back doors you could just install an essential security system.Essential Security SystemAn essential security system provides contacts on your main entry doors and a motion detector in the main pathway of your home. In most homes this is the hallway leading to the bedrooms. This type of system assumes that if the intruder enters your home through an unprotected opening such as a window that the motion detector will detect them and sound the alarm. It is always best to detect an intruder before they have entered your home. If they start to make entry and the alarm system sounds the burglar can make the choice to run away and not ransack your home. This system has adequate coverage when your system is armed in away mode because all sensors are armed. If you are at home and asleep the system is armed in stay mode which automatically shuts of the motion detector. There are two times that your home and family are most vulnerable and those are when you are away from your home and when you are asleep in your home. The essential home security system will only provide the best coverage when you are away from your home.Full Perimeter ProtectionThe goal of having a security system is to be notified if any opening to your house is violated. You want to receive this notification as quickly as possible. In order to have this happen you must have contacts installed at every window and door in your home. This forms a security curtain around your home so that the potential intruder cannot get in undetected. If you want typical full perimeter protection you will want to install contacts on every door and window.Advanced Full Perimeter ProtectionIn order for full perimeter protection to work the intruder must open a door or window. In many cases the burglar will break a window and then reach inside to unlatch the lock and then open the window or door. In this scenario the alarm system will sound. If the intruder does not open the window or door then the alarm system will not sound. In this case the only way the intruder will be detected is if they pass by the motion detector. This is why the motion detector is a secondary or backup device. The goal is to keep the burglar outside the home. In order to do this with advanced protection you can install glass break detectors. This type of detector is built to hear breaking glass and when it does the alarm will sound. Another advantage of a glass break detector is that they can be programmed to be a 24 hour device. This means that they will sound the alarm even if the system is not armed. When you incorporate all of the following types of protection you have utilized every form of protection available for your home and family.Additional Protection available from your Security SystemSo far we have only talked about protection from an unwanted intruder of the human variety. There are a few unwanted intruders and potentially more detrimental to your home and family and should be incorporated into your total home protection plan. These unwanted intruders are:

Fire

Carbon Monoxide

Flooding
*Fire Facts:Chances are you will have a fire

Number of home fires your household can expect in an average lifetime: 5

Chances your household will have a reported home fire in an average lifetime: 1 in 4

Chances that someone in your household will suffer a fire injury in an average lifetime: 1 in 10

Chances that someone in your household will suffer an injury in a reported fire in an average lifetime: 1 in 89
Households can expect to average a home fire every 15 years or five fires in an average lifetime. (Life expectancy now averages 78 years in the U.S., according to the Statistical Abstract.) That is one of the results of the latest survey of unreported fires, conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2004-2005, when combined with NFPA’s annual tracking of reported fires.Most of these will be small fires resulting in little or no damage and will not be reported to a fire department, but even a trivial fire causes at least some temporary anxiety.Your household has a one in four chance of having a home fire large enough to be reported to a fire department during an average lifetime.Someone in your household also has a one in ten chance of suffering a fire injury in a home fire an average lifetime. More likely than not, this will be a minor injury suffered in a fire that you did not report to the fire department. You might not even remember the injury a month after it happened. About one out of nine of these injuries will occur in a reported home fire, which means someone in your household has a one in 89 chance of suffering a fire injury in a reported home fire in an average lifetime.As you can see the likelihood of having a fire is high and the best protection is a smoke detector. A smoke detector provides early notification so that you can save your family and your processions. The average damage done by a fire can be far worse than the loss from a burglary but many people still neglect to make sure that they have a working detector.Protection from FloodingJust a few inches of water from a flood can cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage. From 2008 to 2012, the average residential flood claim amounted to more than $38,000. Flood insurance is the best way to protect yourself from devastating financial loss.Here are some startling facts:Property damage resulting from water damage due to plumbing failures and freezing pipes is the second most common cause of homeowner loss.Water caused $9.1 billion in annual homeowner policy property losses annually from 2007 to 2009 – approximately 23 percent of all homeowner property losses.”Water damage claims have been growing faster than other components of homeowners insurance.” – American Insurance AssociationDesigning the Layout of your Alarm SystemNow that you are aware of the different types of protection and they work you can begin to layout your alarm system. I have always used the following method in setting up my alarm system installations. Grab a piece of paper and start at your front door. Go to each opening in your home and write down the name of each door and window. Make sure that you have the following column titles on your list:Zone Type Zone NameI always walk clockwise around each new installation. This makes sure that I do not miss any openings in the home and I also have a list with all of the names of the openings which I will use later for programming the panel. At the end of your walk through you will have a list of all the areas that you want to protect and their names. Make sure you include a minimum of one motion detector in the main hallway of the house. If you have a two story home you will want to see if the motion detector can be located so that the stairway is included. You will be able to use this list in the event that you decide to do an installation on your own (DIY) or when you have a professional provide you with a quote.

The Best Books on Cryptocurrency

The Sovereign Individual ~ by James Dale Davidson and William Rees Morg

The Sovereign Individual is one of those books that forever changes how you see the world. It was published in 1997 but the degree to which it anticipates the impact of blockchain technology will give you chills. We’re entering the fourth stage of human society, shifting from the industrial to an information age. You need to read this book to understand the scope and scale of how things are going to change.

As it becomes easier to live comfortably and earn an income anywhere, we already know that those who truly thrive in the new information age will be workers who are not tethered to a single job or career and are location independent. The pull to choose where to live based on price savings is already more appealing, but this goes beyond digital nomadism and freelance gigs; the foundations of democracy, government and money are shifting.

The authors predicted Black Tuesday and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and here they foresee that the rising power of individuals will coincide with decentralized technology nibbling away at the power of governments. The death toll for the nation states, they predicted with extraordinary prescience, will be private, digital cash. When that happens, the dynamic of governments as stationary bandits robbing hard-working citizens with taxation will change. If you’ve become someone who can solve problems for people anywhere in the world, then you’re about to enter the new cognitive elite. Don’t miss this one.

Choice Quotation: “When technology is mobile, and transactions occur in cyberspace, as they increasingly will do, governments will no longer be able to charge more for their services than they are worth to the people who pay for them.”

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind ~ by Yuval Noah Harari

Whenever I want to impress on someone how good this book is, I ask: “Do you want to know the fundamental difference between humans and monkeys? A monkey can jump up and down on a rock and wave a stick around and screech to his friends that he’s seen a threat coming their way. ‘Danger! Danger! Lion!’ A monkey can also lie. It can jump up and down on the rock and wave a stick around and screech about a lion when there is, in fact, no lion. He’s just fooling around. But what a monkey cannot do is jump up and down and wave a stick around and screech, ‘Danger! Danger! Dragon!’”

Why is this? Because dragons aren’t real. As Harari explains, it is human imagination, our ability to believe in and talk about things we have never seen or touched that has elevated the species to cooperate in large numbers with strangers. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, no religions and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. It is us that makes them so.

All of which is a rather magnificent preamble to where we are today. After the Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution, Harari guides you into The Scientific Revolution, which got underway only 500 years ago and which may start something completely different for humankind. Money, however, will remain. Read this book to understand that money is the greatest story ever told and that trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.

Choice Quotation: “Sapiens, in contrast, live in triple-layered reality. In addition to trees, rivers, fears and desires, the Sapiens world also contains stories about money, gods, nations and corporations.”

The Internet of Money ~ by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

If the two books mentioned above help us to understand the historical context in which Bitcoin first appeared, then this book expands on the ‘why’ with infectious enthusiasm. Andreas Antonopolous is perhaps the most respected voice in the crypto space. He’s been traveling the world as a Bitcoin evangelist since 2010 and this book is a summary of talks he gave on the circuit between 2013 and 2016, all tightened up for publication.

His first book, Mastering Bitcoin, is a technical deep-dive into the technology, aimed more specifically at developers, engineers, and software and systems architects. But this book uses some choice metaphors to explain why you can’t ban Bitcoin or turn it off, how the scaling debate doesn’t really matter and why Bitcoin needs the help of designers to lock in mass adoption.

“When you first ride your brand new automobile in a city,” he writes, “you are riding on roads used by horses with infrastructures designed and used for horses. There are no light signals. There are no road rules. There are no paved roads. And what happened? The cars got stuck because they didn’t have balance and four feet.” But fast forward one hundred years and the cars that were once ridiculed are absolutely the norm. If you want to swim around in the philosophical, social and historical implications of Bitcoin, this is your starting point.

A Guide to Help You Pick the Best Air Purifier for Your Loved Ones

Holidays are around the corner. This is the time of year when people start purchasing gifts for their loved ones. If you are going to purchase an air purifier for someone you love, we have some helpful tips for you. If you want to purchase the best unit, you may be able to use this guide to your advantage. Read on to find out more.

1: Set Your Budget

Just like anything you purchase, make sure you have set your budget first. The price of the unit will vary based on a lot of factors, such as the capacity, filter type, features, and brand of the unit. If you don’t have a flexible budget, we suggest that you go for a product that is available to purchase for less than $300.

2: Consider the Needs of the Recipient

Your next move is to consider the needs of your recipient. If you are going to purchase this unit for everyday use, we suggest that you go for a unit that comes with a HEPA filter. On the other hand, if your loved one has a specific need, we suggest that you consider a specialized unit.

For example, if they are more prone to respiratory issues, such as allergies and infections, we suggest that you get a UV purifier for them. The devices are designed to neutralize viruses and bacteria.

3: Think About the Available Space

Another primary factor is to consider the available space in the office or house of the recipient. For example, if they need a general-purpose unit for a small apartment, you may want to consider a filterless unit.

On the other hand, if they have plenty of free space, you may consider a bigger unit that features a higher airflow rating. These units are powerful enough to cover a large face.

4: Consider Extra Features

Lastly, we suggest that you consider additional features that they will just love. For example, some units come with an indicator that turns on when the filter needs to be replaced. This will allow the user to change the filter so that the device continues to work properly.

So, you may want to consider these features before you place your order. These features may not be important to you, but your friend may just be over the moon.

Long story short, we suggest that you consider these four tips if you are going to purchase a gift for your loved one on these holidays. Since the air is full of pollution during winter days, nothing can make a better gift than an air purifier. Therefore, you should consider these tips before looking for an online or physical store to make your purchase decision.