momov2 said:
On one note, If you have a security system installed in your home already, your security company can do this for you too. They can put sensors on your patio doors and on your gate that give an audible alarm when opened. Your alarm system does not have to be atcivated as when you are not home to have this feature.
That is correct, but sometimes you have to twist their arms to get them to add something that is not on their normal menu.
I wanted to have my garage door (with sensor) to be able to be closed and alarmed AFTER I left the garage. It was just dumb to have to back the car out and then go inside to set the alarm. The regular setup would not allow for any contact to be open while setting the alarm. The prior owners had just left it not engaged at all. I knew from the DIYSecurity forum that it could be done but the company did not have experience with that. They sent their "best man" and he could not do it, finally, from the forum, I got the exact codes that were required. Even then their "best man" could not make it work. While he fiddled, I pulled up the Installation Manual online and read aloud the steps that explained how to input the numbers so that the system could read "11" as eleven and not "1", "1". Next year when he saw me he said that only 3 people had ever asked for that but it was a cool thing to be able to have.
On the DIYSecurity forum they sell a lot of things that are unusual, also SafeMart.com sells unusual things. I got water sensors that alert me if the AC pan or hot water heater pan in the attic is holding any water, for example, and had that hooked to my monitored alarm system. My monitoring company was able to hook it up when I told them how to treat it (like a medical alert, no alarm but a call to the station and a beeping at home).
On that forum, much like this forum, you will learn that way too many of the "professionals" are either poorly trained or too rushed to do a top notch job most of the time.
[edit] A quick review of that forum shows that a Pool Alert is always a separate thing from a security system. So no help from the security folks on this one. sorry