Boonieman
Well-known member
Our driveway is about a half mile long, winding down thru woods and thru a covered bridge, no way to get our 5th wheel toy hauler down to the house. We also have a few acres across the county road from our driveway, so when we had a pole barn built that?s where we put it so we could store the RV and some other stuff in it.....easy access, close to the paved road. Unlike our house which is armed with great alert dogs and other deterrents, the building sits up there unattended and potentially an easy target. We did install an alarm system with motion detectors and door sensors (no WiFi) and this system will text our phones in the event of an alarm condition. It is a 3G based system and works pretty good, but we have had an occasional false alarm.....a couple of them in the wee hours of the morning. That meant getting up, driving up to the building to check, and so far false alarms thank goodness, but a pain. I can get WiFi up there for a camera system, but down here in the sticks it?s a locally owned phone company and WiFi for just that building is about $70 a month. I?m not doing that. My better half was researching game cameras this fall. We ended up mounting one high up on the building. It is set up to use a 3G phone modem (way more secure than WiFi, no hacking) and when the camera takes a picture, it sends a message to our phones saying that the camera just took a picture and the modem transmits the picture. The camera is designed to be outdoors and has a flashless infrared feature for night pictures. You do have to pay a month fee for the 3G access, but it?s like $10 a month, more if you get a higher data plan, but reasonable. I like this system because if someone destroys the camera, too late, the picture is already on the way. Right now we are using AA batteries and they have been in there a month and still showing 70%. Since it looks like it?s working acceptable, I?m going to install an external power supply, but it still has battery backup. I know I can?t be the only one who?s has to store something out of our line of sight, so just wanted to pass along how we cope with it. I?m sure there are as good or better ideas out there, just what we are doing, for now anyway. I?m attempting to attach a photo of when I was pulling up to the building as an example.