Home Security Gadgets & Reviews

As we’ve talked about before, a guard dog can be a great deterrent to burglars. If you were a thief, would you rather break into a house with two giant barking dogs or the one across the street without any pets to deal with? Chances are you’d avoid the dogs if there was an easier mark to be had.

But what if you’re not a pet person? Say you don’t have the time or money to feed, walk, and otherwise care for a dog. You could try a security gadget like this electronic watch dog.

The device has radar eyes that can sense movement through doors, walls, and even glass, and when it detects an intruder, it’ll play realistic barking sounds that resonate through the house and can be heard outside. For more realism, the bark of the “guard dog” gets louder and more frequent the closer the intruder gets. No fancy installation is required; just plug in the batteries and mount it somewhere it can keep an electronic eye on the premises.

The electronic watch dog is available online for $85: Electronic Watch Dog Alarm

Not only does outdoor lighting make your yard easier for you to navigate at night but it makes would-be burglars less likely to choose your house as a target for a night time heist. Installing a lighting system throughout the front and back yards can be labor intensive, though… that is if you go with traditional wired lights (wires need to be run underground, hooked up to the circuit breaker, etc.). An alternative is solar lighting where all you have to do is stake the lights in the ground or mount them on a wall or eave, and the sun does the rest.

Traditionally solar-powered lights aren’t that bright, offering more of a bluish beacon on the lawn than truly lighting up the area, but this “Ultra-bright” solar spot light is supposed to shine more intensely than most. If you believe the product description up at the site where it’s being sold, it’s 18 times brighter than other solar spot lights because it’s powered by 16 bright LEDs.

The light costs $70 and can be staked into the ground or wall/ceiling mounted. If they work as well as promised, you ought to be able to light up the dark areas in your yard for a couple hundred dollars (if it were me, I’d just start out with one light and see how well it works before committing myself to several of them). If you’re interested, here’s the link:

Ultra-Bright Solar Spotlight