Driveway Alarms For Home Security

One of the most common ways to monitor a driveway is through a driveway alarm. They are remote systems that are triggered when someone or something enters your driveway or garden.

Driveway alarms provide an alert to you that someone might be trespassing on your property as well as deterring a would-be burglar before they get as far as your home.

 

Driveway alarms provide many benefits:

  • The arrival of a welcome visitor
  • The presence of an unwelcome visitor
  • To trigger night lighting
  • The unwanted wandering of a child towards danger
  • Perhaps the wandering off by a person with special needs
  • A wandering pet

Driveway Alarm
These systems can actually be used in any area of your property. If you have an extensive lawn or grounds you could benefit from a driveway alarm system. It can be used to monitor other areas of your property. This is very beneficial as professional burglars might not always enter the property via the driveway. Once this alarm system is triggered, it can be designed to either trigger security monitoring cameras or simply sound a siren and/or flash a strobe light. In most circumstances, this would be enough to deter a burglar and make them move on as well as alert the neighbors and the authorities, if required.

When purchasing a driveway sensor system, several factors need to be considered. Consider the range of the transmitter as some of the early systems to be introduced had a range that could not exceed 1000 feet. More modern systems will offer a range of several miles between each transmitter. There are also some systems that make use of magnetic fields which means you can customize them according to your specific driveway.

The receiver system can be tailored to suit your needs too. You can choose the sound options such as a whistle or a chime. You can also configure them to automatically contact you monitor security provider, emergency services or a specified list of contacts in the event of the system triggering. They can also trigger a recording security camera system. Security reasons aside, these systems can be used to simply make it more convenient to navigate your property at night by triggering exterior security lighting to light up your driveway making it a safe journey to your property.

There are several options of installation method.

Advantages Disadvantages
Wireless Simple installation, less expensive for longer distances There is a battery to change and range is limited by trees and buildings
Wired No outside maintenance and nothing above ground on metal detection systems May be more expensive on long runs, more difficult to install
Infra Red Detects people and cars (Moving heat detection) Detects large animals, occasionally birds and sometimes sunlight
Metal Sensing Probes Only detects moving metal Will not detect people