Well, how do I start? On Wednesday, April 11, and 1:18 PM, my back door was kicked in by a burgler. 1 minute later, HomeSeer sent an email to my cell phone indicating that the back door was open and unauthorized, and that there was movement in the kitchen and living room (my only sets of motion detectors so far). I was able to verify all this through the web interface, however, I was still a little skeptical since I had gotten one or two false alarms from the kitchen motion detector (but not the back door before).
I immediately called my wife and we decided to converge on the house together just to check it out. She got there first and called me. I asked her to peek in the back yard gate to see if the back door was open. It was. She ran. I called the police while I was still on my way and told them there were strange people in my house. When I arrived 5 minutes later, there was already 1 police car driving around, but being alone, he didn't go into the house. When several backup cars arrived, they surrounded the house, and police went in through the back, but the burglers had escaped by then, I assume out the back way while the lone policeman was in front.
They ransacked the place. Took a lot of my wife's jewelry, a lot of her designer handbags, a laptop computer, a digital video camera, my playstation, and my really nice watch. They had apparently attempted to take a tablet PC as well (how they didn't succeed, I don't know), as well as my 50" LCD TV which was lying in the middle of the living room floor.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt. My wife made it away ok, and my 2 year old daughter was at daycare. However, emotionally and mentally, I don't think I'll ever be the same. Kudos to HomeSeer for doing it's job, but really, I have little choice but to invest in more. Martin, expect a call from me on Friday.
Fellow cocooners, I know many of you are already secure, but for those of you who are not yet, please take the time and money necessary to secure your home and family. Don't get me wrong, they will get in if they want to, and there is little you can do to stop a determined criminal like this (especially when you are not home), but the more deterrents, the better.
Part of the irony here is that I was just a couple days away from buying and installing web cameras so that I could have checked on the house from my office, but they beat me to the punch.
I immediately called my wife and we decided to converge on the house together just to check it out. She got there first and called me. I asked her to peek in the back yard gate to see if the back door was open. It was. She ran. I called the police while I was still on my way and told them there were strange people in my house. When I arrived 5 minutes later, there was already 1 police car driving around, but being alone, he didn't go into the house. When several backup cars arrived, they surrounded the house, and police went in through the back, but the burglers had escaped by then, I assume out the back way while the lone policeman was in front.
They ransacked the place. Took a lot of my wife's jewelry, a lot of her designer handbags, a laptop computer, a digital video camera, my playstation, and my really nice watch. They had apparently attempted to take a tablet PC as well (how they didn't succeed, I don't know), as well as my 50" LCD TV which was lying in the middle of the living room floor.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt. My wife made it away ok, and my 2 year old daughter was at daycare. However, emotionally and mentally, I don't think I'll ever be the same. Kudos to HomeSeer for doing it's job, but really, I have little choice but to invest in more. Martin, expect a call from me on Friday.
Fellow cocooners, I know many of you are already secure, but for those of you who are not yet, please take the time and money necessary to secure your home and family. Don't get me wrong, they will get in if they want to, and there is little you can do to stop a determined criminal like this (especially when you are not home), but the more deterrents, the better.
Part of the irony here is that I was just a couple days away from buying and installing web cameras so that I could have checked on the house from my office, but they beat me to the punch.