Metal (vehicle) detector

That sounds like your best option, but it is best to assume that any underground conduit is a wet environment, and that plain cat-5 cable will quickly go bad. You can buy underground-rated cat-5 cable, but you won't find it at Home Depot. Go to a real electrical supply house. Ask for "flooded" or "direct bury" cable. Yes, it will cost more.

Vaughn

Ethernet equipment can drive cat5 to about 300 feet. You'll need a switch or such to act as a repeater in the middle somewhere, or you could go to multimode fiber.

You can get equip. that will drive ethernet over longer stretches of cat5 (an active 'adapter' box that sits on both ends of the cable), lots of stuff over at black box.

Dave

correct. you won't get an ethernet to work at 700 feet without repeaters (lame) or ethernet bridges that pretty much turn the signal into DSL. Tut Systems, possibly Motorola now makes these devices. You can use cat3 wire with these things ok, so basically phone wire works.

Fiber may be the best bet. It's cheaper than non-trash grade ethernet cable, and you can actually get the transcievers used at ok prices. As for how you handle signalling of events, that's another issue. If you want a giant expensive project, you can use Lantronix serial/ I/O to ethernet devices. They allow you to poll ports or control I/O devices across a network. They're small, and I think rated at an industrial temp range. I use one of these:

it was something like $80 in the b-stock section. they pop from time to time at the opened and returned price.

The catch is you end up with a network closet at both ends once you start doing stuff like this and using ethernet.

black box is the ultimate in ripoff pricing. Avoid them unless you prefer the 1970s project box look at higher than agilent test equipment prices.

What if somebody WALKS in? We have been using a Dakota Alert IR unit for the last 15 years to signal us by rf from 600 feet away. We added a box from them that gives us a 20 amp set of relay contacts with an on-timer. I bought one of those half-million candlepower 12 volt hand lanterns, got an 8 amp transformer from Surplus center and hooked it all up. I don't have a hill in the way, so the recieving equipment is in a spare bedroom. If I go down to get the mail after dark, I can read it at the mail box. The light, aimed at the very end of the driveway where the mailbox sits, almost blinds you at night. Yes, we get a few false alarms, but they are almost always deer or the stray cat who seems to "come to work" here in the late morning and then go back to wherever at night. The transmitter uses a 9v battery which lasts about 8 months.

Just a note on the lamp: I am amazed at the life of the bulbs. I have only replaced 3 or 4 in 15 years! The thing gets activated several times EVERY day.

I have thought about the camera idea from time to time, but haven't acted on it. I think that I'd put the camera in or on the house and use a long lens. That way there's less stuff for vandals to ruin. Then there's the issue of what to do with the camera images. Do you store them? PC? How long? How much of your life do you want to devote to watching the UPS guy turn around in your driveway? Does it "film" constantly or does it simply "wake up" when called upon by an alarm? Is it IR or does it have to turn on a strobe or something to "see" in the dark? If it does "flash" at night, won't the intruder just yank the thing out and take it away? I have also thought about getting one of those hunters' cameras, that take pix when the deer walks by. A friend has one and it works well, but it is a film camera. They must have digital ones by now.

Pete Stanaitis

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nick hull wrote:

That would be a real problem since one end is at the gate and has no shelter; about all I have there is 110vac.

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

** Posted from **

Walking in is less of a problem and when they do there is no way I can monitor thousands of feet of line fence. OTOH if they park outside my gate I want to know about it wether or not they walk in. I live on a dead end road, the nearest neighbor is 1/2 mile away.

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

** Posted from **

It's called a vault, and is also known as a 500gal concrete pump chamber with an added hatch. If you've got power there already you're well on your way.

Another thought, if you do have power there is that you may be able to use one of the power line ethernet or phone bridges to link back to the house without additional wiring.

Actually, it's relatively easy to monitor the fence line if you do it appropriately.

Fiber sounds like a good plan. Good old arcnet, would do the distance but it is slightly obsolete now. I feel old.

Wes

Look into 'Power over Ethernet'. It uses the extra pairs to power remote equipment in 10/100 systems.

Don't forget the remote controlled klaxons. ;-)

[ ... ]

Hmm ... while twisted pair ethernet won't hack it, if you go to

10Base5 (thicknet) you can get up to 1640 feet. That will take 700 feet of RG-8 cable, or even better thicknet cable (which is typically yellow with a black stripe about it every so many feet.) 10Base2 (thinnet) only can get you 607 feet -- not quite enough.

You will need special tools (that made him perk up, as it would anyone in this newsgroup) -- a crimper to connect the Type-N connectors on each end of the cable. You probably won't need the vampire taps and the tools for that -- they are designed for making multiple connections along the length of the cable. All you care about are the two ends, so a cable with male Type-N connectors on each end, a pair of 50 ohm terminators built into Type-N connectors, and a pair of Thicknet transceivers. Two short AUI cables, and old style ethernet cards at each end with the AUI (15-pin D connectors).

Note that the thicknet is only a 10 MB/S speed, not the 100 for CAT-5, or the 1000 for the later fancy types, or the 10000 for the cards which will overload the bus of almost any home computer. :-) But 10Base5 speeds should be all you need. for this.

Good Luck, DoN.

The detectors routinely used in conjunction with traffic control are inductive. They use buried wire loops as sensors. They're able to sense automobiles and motorcycles. They're not expensive but I don't know where you'd get just one. Might try to talk to a city, county or state traffic engineer in your locale. Most significant signallized intersections outside of inner city grids use a bunch of such sensors.

live camera coverage requires significantly more bandwidth than annunciation of alarms. Very inexpensive 432 MHz radios (like $5 at Mouser and DigiKey) can handle annunciation or "alert" over 700 feet with an intervening hill, but not live video. But then, PLC (power line carrier) could also do that. X-10 is PLC.

Ethernet equipment can drive cat5 to about 300 feet. You'll need a switch or such to act as a repeater in the middle somewhere, or you could go to multimode fiber.

You can get equip. that will drive ethernet over longer stretches of cat5 (an active 'adapter' box that sits on both ends of the cable), lots of stuff over at black box.

Dave

The best thing is a bullet cam, under $100. You can then use 72 ohm coaxial cable up to 300 feet long. Of course you will need a video capture card. There are inexpensive 4 input to 16 input cards that use Pico software, but tend to work better with Dico, an improved version of the software. If you only need one cam, a second hand video capture/pvr card with a composite input terminal is easier to use. The Pico type can be set for motion detection, but not the PVR card. A PVR will record continuously. Most also have an RCA jack, while the camera has a BNC connector. Made up cables can be purchased for the camera, which have coax, and 12 power cables. Adapters are available to adapt BNC to RCA. I stream a camera on the web at

, and at the same time have a bullet cam running on a Pico card, + a webam. The last two use motion detection, and are used for surveillance. More cameras are being added. They work great! The webcam uses the HSSVSS freeware. Dico is also freeware.

Hope this helps.

Steve R.

If the fence is cleared and sturdy it's not bad. Mine is old, grown up, difficult to clear, hilly, wooded etc. No convienent perimeter road ;(

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

** Posted from **

That would be a problem since I need 700 feet MINIMUM and 72 ohm co-ax is expensive and hard to find in that length, and I would also need direct burial cable. I need something that will work with Cat5 direct burial 700' long.

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

** Posted from **

Think a few IR laser beams shooting down the length of the fence line at suitable positions. Might not catch folks using night vision gear, but I suspect they aren't the issue.

It would take many, my property has 12 sides and many are hilly and would require multiple lasers per side. Just getting power to that many remote points would be a challenge.

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

** Posted from **

Good sized flock of geese to guard, some remote microphones and a bit of processing to trigger your alarm when the level of cackling gets too loud? Or guard dogs with anti-bark collars hacked to transmit to the alarm rather than shock the dog. Can't beat bio-sensors :-)