Home Security Gadgets & Reviews

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that burglars don’t like to break into homes with well-lit yards. Why would they ply their trade in a lighted area where they might be spotted when there’s a home down the street with a nice dark yard?

Running your outdoor lights all night is a big power drain though, and you will see the cost reflected in your monthly energy bill. That’s why hooking your lights up to motion sensors makes a lot of sense. This way, the lights only go on when someone approaches the house. Using a motion sensor can save a lot of money, since the light is programmed to only stay on for a certain amount of time after the movement stops. There’s no need to leave the lights on all night.

This ActiveEye indoor/outdoor motion sensor from X10 can actually be used in your home as well as outdoors. If you’ve ever dreamed of having the lights come on when you enter a room (especially helpful in those oddly wired rooms where the switch isn’t next to the door), then you can achieve that with this product. At $30, it isn’t a big investment either.

ActiveEye Motion Sensor

When you’re considering security lighting options for your home, you don’t just want to think about keeping burglars away from your yard; you want to think about home safety. The outside of your house should be well lit so friends and family will not hurt themselves when coming home after dark. Important areas to light are pathways and driveways (driveway lights are great for protecting the lawn on either side of the borders). Driveway lights can be a pain to install, though, since most require underground wiring be run from a power soure at the house to each individual light. But today you can get solar driveway lights that can be installed without much effort.

With solar driveway lights, you basically just stick them into the ground and set up the solar module, which collects energy throughout the day and uses it to power LEDs inside the lamps at night.

The lights shown here are a snap to install. They can be purchased at Shades of Light for $65 a piece. Available colors are red, amber, and white.

Shades of Light

A dark backyard can be a haven for burglars. Since they prefer to ply their trade under the cover of darkness, it’s in your best interest to light up your yard. You don’t have to use extremely bright lights that will annoy the neighbors and shine in your bedroom window all night, but consider lights that provide at least as much illumination as a bright full moon.

If you have a structure tucked into the corner of your back yard (i.e. detached garage, green house, shed), you probably don’t want potential burglars snooping around it (these structures often contain tools a thief can use to break into the house). It’s a good idea to light a shed, garage, etc.

This solar shed light from Earth Tech Products would probably do the job. The solar panel above the lamp sucks in the sun’s energy during the day, and powers the light below for many hours into the night. A nice bonus to solar-powered lights is they don’t require electrical wiring.

This one costs $90.

Earth Tech Products

Security timers for your home’s lights, both internal and external, are a good idea if you’re going to be out of town, or even if you work late and don’t get home until after dark. Burglars prefer an easy mark, and they’re less likely to take risks with houses where someone might be home. They don’t want to be caught or identified, so they definitely go for the homes that are obviously vacant.

So, how do you make it look like you’re home when you’re not? Security timers can turn on your lights at night, so it looks like someone is there. The downside is that most of them turn on the lights at the same time every day. A smart burglar might observe this and realize you’re not really home.

That’s why a programmable timer is a smart choice. With a tool like Intermatic’s timer, you can program the lights to come on at different times every night, thus keeping a burglar guessing. At less than $50, it’s not a bad home security investment.

Intermatic Programmable 24-hour Security Timer

It’s always a good idea to have some back-up lighting in your home in case there’s an emergency or the power just goes out in a storm. You can make do with candles and flashlights for a while, but it’s certainly easier to operate with more reliable light sources.

These battery-powered Peanut Emergency Lights come with Velcro strips that can be attached to any spot you want to light during a power outage (the lights can also be used for every day use to brighten up dark areas such as closets, deep cabinets, sheds, etc.). They’re small enough to fit just about anywhere. The emergency lights use LEDs, so they won’t burn out any time soon, and the batteries are easy to replace.

$24 gets you a set of 3 from MoMA Store.

Do you hate coming home to a dark house? Always wondering who or what might be lurking in the shadows? Or maybe you’re just tired of tripping over furniture on the way to a light switch that some idiot placed on the far side of the room. Well, a motion-sensing light that turns on automatically when you enter the room might make you feel a little safer.

This one is wireless, so it’s easy to install anywhere without drilling holes into the walls. It’s even weatherproof and waterproof, so it can be installed outdoors. Stick it in a room, shed, closet, porch, walkway, or any dark spot where you’d like a bit of illumination.

The motion-sensing lamp has LEDs instead of light bulbs, so it’s quite bright and will do a good job lighting things up. It’s powered by 4 C batteries, but since it only turns on when motion is detected, it won’t waste the batteries and you shouldn’t have to replace them often. The lamp is available from SmartHome for $30:

Motion-Activated Anywhere LED Light

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

Putting your lights on timers is a smart move, especially if you travel a lot or get home from work late at night. Seeing the indoor lights on can fool burglars into believing someone is at home even when they’re not. Thieves want the easiest route, the one that is least likely to force them into a confrontation, so they’re not likely to break in if they think someone is at home.

Now it’s easier than ever to automate your lights with gadgets such as the HouseLinc Desktop Starter Kit. With this software, you can control any Insteon and X10 devices (two of the most popular security brands when it comes to lighting and home automation) directly from your home computer, using a USB powerline interface. The software makes it easy to schedule times for lights to turn on and off every day (you can even rotate when exactly you want the lights to come on each day, to offer a more realistic effect). You do need to leave your computer on at all times if you want the events to be triggered (for some people, the computer is on all the time anyway, so it’s no big deal). The price for the software is $140 from SmartHome:

HouseLinc Desktop Starter Kit