Elk foiled a break-in
Wow...what a horrible feeling of violation. My wife and I live in a nice quiet neighborhood on 1.3 acres out in beautiful town in southern New Hampshire. When we bought this house, the previous owner went so far as to say that they hardly ever bothered to even lock the doors. Having lived in San Francisco and Seattle previously, I decided to install an ELK M1 in this new house both for security and home automation.
Yesterday, my wife drove me to a doctor appointment, leaving around 10:30am. My wife and I were talking as we pulled up in the driveway sort of distracting us both. Thus, we both failed to notice the flashing red strobe indicating the alarm had been tripped. In fact, my wife used the wireless fob to disarm the house as normal and we both pulled into the garage oblivious to the potential danger that could have been waiting inside. It was not until we were inside the house and found the window forced open that we realized what had happened.
Once we phoned it in, the police arrived very quickly and helped take a look around. After investigation, it became evident that the would be perpetrators had gone around the back of our house and tried the windows and doors. They lucked out, my wife had left a ground floor window to our utility room unlocked and the window slid right open. Thankfully, the Elk M1 did its job, caught the magnetic window sensor zone violation, and announced the presence of a security system in that oh so sinister manner with both male and female spoken warnings accompanied by a siren. It seems the M1's bark proved ominous enough that the intruder(s) turned tail and fled.
You are probably wondering, why didn't the monitoring company pick this up? Well, that would be because I did not have the Elk connected to a monitoring service. Of course, I will be researching monitoring companies and getting that setup this weekend.
I did have a notification system in place where the elk should have emailed both of our cell phones to indicate the alarm. Though, for some reason, the elk ethernet expander failed to send the messages. Actually, to be more precise, it did send the messages, but my ISP rejected the messages because the email had a blank “from†address. I tested the ethernet expander in the RP to find that it continued to fail. After re-flashing the firmware on the EXP, the email now seems to be working and properly included the from address. Still, I am really upset that the Ethernet expander failed in the first place and not so sure how much faith I want to place in this device in the future.
In summary, the Elk M1 system just saved my family from what could have been a much worse situation. I am grateful that two years after an installation, most of the system worked as intended. However, this was a huge wakeup call for me: It is critical to test your alarm system regularly! My failed Ethernet expander meant that I did not receive the alarm notification I was expecting. Most importantly, alarms do very little good if you don't have them monitored.
Now that this has occurred, my wife is absolutely freaking out. I am normally at work during the day and my wife is normally home alone working in an upstairs office. If we had not been gone, my wife's normal routine would have meant the alarm would have been disarmed and my wife might not have heard the entry being a floor up and across the house. Thinking this potential situation through makes me sick. In fact, my wife is wondering if the intruder might have actually expected her to be there...
Needless to say, the house will now be armed in stay mode all the time, I will be working from home for a few days, monitoring will be activated promptly, and my wife now has a Glock in her desk drawer.
I am telling this story in the hopes that it might help other people re-think their personal home security situations too. It does not matter where you live, no neighborhood is immune to crime. Be safe...
Wow...what a horrible feeling of violation. My wife and I live in a nice quiet neighborhood on 1.3 acres out in beautiful town in southern New Hampshire. When we bought this house, the previous owner went so far as to say that they hardly ever bothered to even lock the doors. Having lived in San Francisco and Seattle previously, I decided to install an ELK M1 in this new house both for security and home automation.
Yesterday, my wife drove me to a doctor appointment, leaving around 10:30am. My wife and I were talking as we pulled up in the driveway sort of distracting us both. Thus, we both failed to notice the flashing red strobe indicating the alarm had been tripped. In fact, my wife used the wireless fob to disarm the house as normal and we both pulled into the garage oblivious to the potential danger that could have been waiting inside. It was not until we were inside the house and found the window forced open that we realized what had happened.
Once we phoned it in, the police arrived very quickly and helped take a look around. After investigation, it became evident that the would be perpetrators had gone around the back of our house and tried the windows and doors. They lucked out, my wife had left a ground floor window to our utility room unlocked and the window slid right open. Thankfully, the Elk M1 did its job, caught the magnetic window sensor zone violation, and announced the presence of a security system in that oh so sinister manner with both male and female spoken warnings accompanied by a siren. It seems the M1's bark proved ominous enough that the intruder(s) turned tail and fled.
You are probably wondering, why didn't the monitoring company pick this up? Well, that would be because I did not have the Elk connected to a monitoring service. Of course, I will be researching monitoring companies and getting that setup this weekend.
I did have a notification system in place where the elk should have emailed both of our cell phones to indicate the alarm. Though, for some reason, the elk ethernet expander failed to send the messages. Actually, to be more precise, it did send the messages, but my ISP rejected the messages because the email had a blank “from†address. I tested the ethernet expander in the RP to find that it continued to fail. After re-flashing the firmware on the EXP, the email now seems to be working and properly included the from address. Still, I am really upset that the Ethernet expander failed in the first place and not so sure how much faith I want to place in this device in the future.
In summary, the Elk M1 system just saved my family from what could have been a much worse situation. I am grateful that two years after an installation, most of the system worked as intended. However, this was a huge wakeup call for me: It is critical to test your alarm system regularly! My failed Ethernet expander meant that I did not receive the alarm notification I was expecting. Most importantly, alarms do very little good if you don't have them monitored.
Now that this has occurred, my wife is absolutely freaking out. I am normally at work during the day and my wife is normally home alone working in an upstairs office. If we had not been gone, my wife's normal routine would have meant the alarm would have been disarmed and my wife might not have heard the entry being a floor up and across the house. Thinking this potential situation through makes me sick. In fact, my wife is wondering if the intruder might have actually expected her to be there...
Needless to say, the house will now be armed in stay mode all the time, I will be working from home for a few days, monitoring will be activated promptly, and my wife now has a Glock in her desk drawer.
I am telling this story in the hopes that it might help other people re-think their personal home security situations too. It does not matter where you live, no neighborhood is immune to crime. Be safe...
