Book Image

Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone

By : William Pretty
Book Image

Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone

By: William Pretty

Overview of this book

One of the best kept secrets of the security industry is just how simple the monitoring hardware actually is - BeagleBone has all the computing power you need to build yourself an extremely sophisticated access control, alarm panel, and home automation and network intrusion-detection system. Security companies make a fortune each year by charging exorbitant fees to their customers. You will learn how easy it is to make an alarm system with Beaglebone. A company-maintained-and-monitored alarm system has its place - your dear old mum is probably not going to be creating her own system any time soon. But if you are reading this book, you are probably a builder or a hobbyist with all the skills required to do it yourself. With Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone, you will learn everything you need to know to develop your own state-of-the-art security system, all for less than a year's worth of monitoring charges from your local alarm company! You will start by building and testing your hardware and open source software on an experimenter's prototype board before progressing to more complex systems. You will then learn how to test your new creations in a modular fashion and begin to utilize BeagleBone. Once your system is built and tested, you will install some of the professional-grade sensors used in modern alarm systems and learn how to use them. You will also discover how to extend your alarm system in a variety of different ways. The only limit will be your imagination.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

The planning phase


This is by far the most important part of the installation. Poor planning has caused more headaches than any other part of an alarm system installation project.

Step 1 – the walkabout

As the name suggests, take a walk around the property you will be protecting, both inside and outside. Try to think like a bad guy.

Ask yourself, "If I wanted to break into this house/office/warehouse, how would I do it?"

Take pictures if you think it will help. Make sketches of the inside and outside of the building, so that you can plan where you are going to put your sensors. There are a number of free landscaping CAD programs that will help you with this.

Here is a simple checklist for you:

  • How many doors are there?

  • What type of doors are they? Garage doors? Human entry doors? Pet doors? (Seriously, burglars have used children.)

  • How many windows are there? How many open?

  • How many windows are there on the ground floor and how many on the second floor? (Burglars use portable ladders.)

  • Is there a...