Protecting Your Home Against Zipper Attacks

 

Motion sensitive devices have been around for quite awhile, and they sometimes go above and beyond what we want them to do. For example, they light our driveways when our friendly neighbor’s flag flutters. They set off our home alarm system after the burglar who broke a window to gain entry is already twenty feet inside the living room. And they turn off public restroom lights in mid stream (pun intended) if they no longer detect movement.

But, in spite of their quirks motion detectors are handy devices. It’s their sensitivity settings, or lack thereof, that can drive an owner to the point of grabbing a baseball bat to knock the thing from its mounting in order to club it into a million pieces. The nerve of it to flash on and off all night long causing us to think an army of creepy crooked criminals are crawling across our concrete walks. Yes, feral cats think it’s funny to disturb your evening by darting back and forth across your driveway simply to watch you come running outside in your pajamas holding an umbrella or spatula as a weapon to use against the intruder your winky-blinky light told you was there.

So, knowing the current issues and flaws associated with these flawed fixtures, scientists have developed a super-smart motion detector that not only works well and is extremely sensitive, it is 100% concealable. And speaking of its sensitivity, well, it can detect a movement as slight as someone moving the zipper on their jacket. You know, like when the bad guys in old films give their coat zippers a tiny tug upward before committing a dastardly deed. So yes, the new motion sensor, a sensor cable, will fit nicely in crime novels and other fictional settings. Here’s how it works…

The cable is fitted with ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors that detect changes in magnetic fields…even minute changes in those fields, such as the slight vibration caused by the movement of the aforementioned zipper. When the cable detects these changes in the nearby magnetic field it sends a message via Bluetooth to a controller that can activate outdoor lights, alarms, video recorders, call the police, alert a home or business owner, etc.

The sensor cable can be mounted along a fence line, hung in trees, and even buried underground.

This new device sounds wonderful and foolproof. However, it is still a cousin to the Internet of Things family, which means that no matter how seriously sensitive the sensor’s sensors are, its controller is susceptible to super-sorry hackers.

Still, imagine an entry team ready to serve a high-risk warrant at a home with one of these cables buried around the perimeter of the property when one of the team members discovers that he’d forgotten to zip his fly at the last bathroom break. Should he zip up, risking alerting those inside the target home to the team’s presence? Or, should he move in as planned, hoping there are no “escapes from custody.” Either way, the result would not be pretty.

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