Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor?

   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #21  
OK - now you have me interested. So - I install the sensor at my inner gate - 270 feet, line of sight, from the house. I suspect these units can transmit that distance. Almost every day I'm out on the property - this will put me about half mile from the house. Can I carry the receiver out that distance and expect the sensor to transmit that far?

Or as an alternate - can the sensor be set to call thru to my cell phone and leave a simple message - such as - "contact made". I CAN get messages on the cell when I'm out on the property.

Otherwise - this entire situation would be of value only when I'm in or close around the house.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #22  
I have had a Dakota Alert Murs system for 6-7 years;two sensors ,one is 1/2 mile away.Work very well as long as you use Lithium Ion Batteries(cold up here).
Funny thing;my dogs do not pay attention to the farther alarm but respond if my drive-way alarm goes off.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #23  
OK - now you have me interested. So - I install the sensor at my inner gate - 270 feet, line of sight, from the house. I suspect these units can transmit that distance. Almost every day I'm out on the property - this will put me about half mile from the house. Can I carry the receiver out that distance and expect the sensor to transmit that far?

Or as an alternate - can the sensor be set to call thru to my cell phone and leave a simple message - such as - "contact made". I CAN get messages on the cell when I'm out on the property.

Otherwise - this entire situation would be of value only when I'm in or close around the house.

I've been using the Dakota Alert sensors for a few years. I actually just bought 2 more. As someone else mentioned, they are looking for temperature changes, so you have to "aim" them at a height where they'll detect a warm engine compartment, etc. One thing I like about the Dakota's is that you can set each transmitter to a different chime, so I know when the detector closest to the road sees something, then the next one up the driveway and then the ones around the house.

The Dakota receiver also has a 12V output of some sort that gets energized when it chimes. I'm not sure exactly how it works but I want to look at it a little more as I'm configuring the transmitters that I just bought. I have a "GPS Tracking System" that can go in a car and is 12V powered. It's also got a cell transmitter in it that can send alerts when something triggers it - ignition on, etc. My hope is that I can somehow use that in conjunction with the 12V output of the Dakota Alert system to send me a text if I'm not home.

Of course, I have two other wi-fi enabled cameras that also send notifications to my phone or emails so I'm not sure how much more benefit I'll have with getting driveway alerts too.

I tried the Mighty Mule magnetic sensor that someone linked to above. It seemed like temperature changes would trigger it, so I took it out of service.

I've also had some of the Harbor Freight motion detectors. What was odd with them is that if you had a partly cloudy day with "cloud shadows" moving across the ground - those would trigger the alarm. I took those back to HF.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor?
  • Thread Starter
#24  
I have two other wi-fi enabled cameras that also send notifications to my phone

What do you use for this? Do you have to pay a monthly fee for the pictures to be sent to your phone?
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #25  
OK - now you have me interested. So - I install the sensor at my inner gate - 270 feet, line of sight, from the house. I suspect these units can transmit that distance. Almost every day I'm out on the property - this will put me about half mile from the house. Can I carry the receiver out that distance and expect the sensor to transmit that far?

Or as an alternate - can the sensor be set to call thru to my cell phone and leave a simple message - such as - "contact made". I CAN get messages on the cell when I'm out on the property.

Otherwise - this entire situation would be of value only when I'm in or close around the house.

In the owners manual they show how to add items, I will look into this because that’s a feature I would like also. Plus it would notify you when you were away.

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   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #26  
Dakota Alert MURS with magnetic buried probe. I've had mine for 13 years. Hooked to a small solar panel which keeps it charged up. Very reliable. 700' away from my house.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #28  
What do you use for this? Do you have to pay a monthly fee for the pictures to be sent to your phone?

I'm actually using a couple of them. One of them is a "Nest" camera (formerly known as a "DropCam"). I pay $100/ year for the cloud storage and I believe they store the history for 30 days. Someone on one of these forums told me that they now have an account where they'll store 14 days for $5/month. I haven't looked into that, but I should.

My Nest camera is actually an indoor camera. I have it sitting in a front window that looks up my 350' driveway. It will pick up a vehicle or a person coming up the driveway. You can also set "zones" in it, so it will give you a message of "sidewalk" or "driveway" based on where it senses the motion. This camera also has 2 way audio (like those doorbells), but I have the audio disabled since I really don't want hours of TV audio or me talking to Sweetie stored in the cloud. My only "complaint" with this is the night vision although it's not the camera's fault. We have our sidewalk post light basically in between the line of sight of the house and the driveway. When the light comes on, it totally messes up being able to see much past the light post, although I do have several night videos of various critters walking on the sidewalk. LOL! What's interesting is that I turned off the "infrared night vision" on the camera and that actually helped the night video in my situation. Nest has since come out with an outdoor version of the camera, but I haven't sprung for it.

Nest Cam Outdoor | Home Security Rain or Shine | Nest


My other camera is a D-Link DCS-936L. It's also an indoor camera, but I've had it mounted under the eave of my detached garage (obviously outdoors) for a couple of years now with no problem. They have newer versions of this camera now. It points towards my house and there is quite a bit of common viewing area between the cameras - although it's at different angles. It will also send me emails when it sees motion, but I don't pay any attention to them since the Nest sends me alerts that are easier to monitor. This camera doesn't save to the cloud, but it does store video on an SD card. The videos are 1 minute long each, so it is kind of a pain to find something, but I have used it. What I'll do is find the time that I want to look at based on the Nest camera (which has a "timeline interface") and then look for the timestamped DLink videos based on that. It also has sound recording and built in infrared. There are two little red lights on the camera when the infrared is activated. It gives pretty decent video quality for a low end camera.

Wi-Fi Cameras | D-Link


You might also want to look at Wyze Cameras. They are pretty inexpensive and people seem to like them. They also send text videos, save to the cloud (no fee, I think), etc. One of my buddies on another forum has one and really likes it. For the price, I'm considering one or two of them as well.

Wyze | Making Great Technology Accessible


The key to making these wi-fi cameras work is a good wi-fi signal. I have a Ubiquiti signal amplifier on my network. It's designed to be outdoors (which is/was my original plan) but mine is indoors - in my basement. This gives me a great signal most places on my property, including to the camera in the garage. Your average LinkSys home router may not give you the signal strength that you need for outdoor cameras. Even inside, my Nest camera used to drop the connection, but once I got the Ubiquiti installed, I haven't had a problem. There are plenty of IT guys on here that can give good advice on extending your wi-fi range.

I'll be curious to see what you come up with. I'm only on 5 acres here. I think you're on a lot more so you have additional challenges.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor?
  • Thread Starter
#29  
Thank you. That's a lot less money then I expected to be able to see what's happening on your phone. I have a friend that has cameras insider her house and she watches everything that her kids and pets are doing. She has several pot belly pigs and she is always watching them more then anything else. But I thought she said she pays $100 a month for what she's using.
 
   / Anybody own a Guardline Driveway Sensor? #30  
I use IP cameras, and watch them for $0 per month.
 
 
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