THE PORCH LIGHT
Hey there!
Heritage Day celebrations mean one thing in SA. So Olarm built the Braai Master game for your enjoyment: 60 seconds on the grill, and the top 10 walk away with braai gear. First place takes a Donkey Long Tong.
We’ve all had a go, and none of us is winning anything. Yet…
Speaking of things that happen in 60 seconds, we spent this week working out exactly what happens after your alarm goes off. Not the siren part. The part you never see, between the sensor tripping and a vehicle arriving.
We also look at:
Why your camera cries wolf at 2 am
A R240 sensor that tells you when a door opens
Lights that come on by themselves when the alarm trips
A robot that won a fight it was never really in
And way, way more…
Hit reply and tell us how many false alarms you've set off this year. We'll go first: too many.
Justin, Kobus and Rowen
THE BIG ONE · SAFE AND SOUND
What actually happens in the 60 seconds after your alarm goes off
You know the siren and the phone call, but almost nobody knows what happens in between. And it’s actually quite a lot.
See, your alarm isn't just one device. It's a chain, and every link is a place where things can go right or wrong.
The chain, in order
A sensor trips.
Your panel registers which zone it came from.
The communicator sends that signal out of your house, over LTE or a VHF radio network.
The control room receives it, checks your file, and acts.
That last part is where the time goes. Older signalling paths can take 30 to 90 seconds to reach the control room. Which means that your siren will have been going for a minute before anyone even knows about it.
What the control room is actually doing
Major response providers dispatch a vehicle the moment the signal lands, and phone you at the same time rather than waiting. If you answer and say it was you, the vehicle gets cancelled. Arrival is usually within minutes, depending on where you are.
The call itself has a script most people have never noticed. The controller lets your primary number ring about five times, then tries your secondary, and the officer is already driving while that happens. When you answer, you'll be asked for your password, not your name. That's the part that matters, and it's the part people forget under stress.
Not every signal is treated the same. Panic buttons get faster escalation than a standard zone trigger, because the event is higher risk by definition. And your history matters too: verification steps, event type and what your system has done before all shape whether someone is dispatched immediately or only after they've tried to reach you.
Why some control rooms know more than others
Here's the bit that explains a lot of frustration: a basic radio transmitter can only send simple burglary, panic or power-failure signals. That's it. A signal arrives saying something happened, with no further detail.
A proper communicator sends which zone tripped. It might say specifically the kitchen window, not just "an alarm". It could be the same house, with the same siren, but a completely different set of data arrives at the other end — perhaps prompting a completely different response.
The false alarm problem
Every false alarm you generate is logged, and repeated ones can change your call rules and how your signals get verified. Enough of them and you're the house they phone first and dispatch to second. That's not a punishment, it's triage, and it's worth understanding before it happens to you.
The signal
Three things to check this week. Know your password and make sure everyone in the house does, because that's what the controller asks for. Make sure your secondary contact number is current, since it's the one they call when you don't answer. And find out whether your system reports which zone tripped or just that a general “something triped somewhere”, because that single difference changes what the control room can do for you.
FIVE SIGNALS
Smart insights, short and sweet
WORK AND PLAY DStv's package shake-up is live, and Compact Plus got an upgrade: customers now get Premium content at no extra cost. Signal: Check what tier you're on before you cancel anything. You may already have more than you think.
COMFORT Xiaomi's Smart Humidifier 2 scored 8.8 at under R1,200. No fuss, plenty of mist, which is the whole job. Signal: Worth it if anyone in your house wakes up with a dry throat. Not worth it otherwise.
AUTOMATION A robot won the first human versus robot MMA fight, sort of. Influencer Frankie LaPenna took on a six-foot humanoid in San Francisco and was kicked across the ring inside 44 seconds. The machine was piloted by a person in VR to promote a VR game. Signal: Nothing about it was autonomous. The robot is a puppet and the fight is an advert.
AUTOMATION How to tell whether you can trust what an AI tells you. Here’s a practical guide to spotting when a confident answer is a made-up one. Signal: If it can't tell you where the answer came from, treat it as a guess.
MONEY eBucks stop working at Spar on 30 September. FNB customers will no longer earn or spend them there. Signal: If you've been banking them for a big shop, this is the week to spend them.
WORTH IT?
Sonoff DW2 Wi-Fi door and window sensor
R240 at Eiferer
BUY for the doors your alarm ignores. NO if your panel already covers everything.
Two pieces of plastic, one on the door and one on the frame, and your phone tells you the moment they separate. There’s no hub or monthly fee, and it works whether your alarm is armed or not.
That last part is the useful bit: your alarm is off all day while everyone's home, which is exactly when the back door, the garage door and the gate get opened by people who shouldn't be opening them. This fills that gap for R240.
Two catches. It's Wi-Fi, so it needs 2.4GHz and it will drop if your signal doesn't reach that end of the house. And it only tells you, not a control room. This is an awareness device, not a monitored one, and it doesn't replace anything your armed response contract covers.
THE FIX
Why your camera cries wolf at 2 am
It's seldom an actual intruder; motion detection on most consumer cameras is pixel-change detection, which means anything that changes the picture counts as motion.
01 Turn the sensitivity down and add detection zones. Most people run cameras at factory sensitivity, which is set high so the camera looks good in the shop. Mask out the road, the tree and the neighbour's yard, and keep the zone to what you actually own.
02 Move the camera off the wall or add a hood. Infrared light bounces off a nearby wall, a beam or the eaves and blinds the sensor, which reads as motion. If the false alarms only happen after dark, this is your cause.
03 Wipe the lens and check for a web. A single spider working across the lens at night sets off more alerts than every real event combined. It's the most common cause and the most embarrassing one.
If your camera feeds a monitored alarm rather than just your phone, fixing this matters more than convenience. Repeated false signals change how your provider treats your account. Your Olarm HUB reports what your panel tells it, so a badly tuned camera zone becomes a badly tuned alarm. Check what's triggering in the Olarm APP and speak to your installer if the pattern doesn't change.
ONE AUTOMATION
Advanced: make your lights come on when the alarm trips
WHEN the alarm triggers
THEN every outside light turns on
AND the passage light inside
A siren tells the street something is happening, but lights also tell them where. They also remove the dark corners someone was counting on. It also works when nothing else does: if nobody answers the phone and the control room is still trying your second number, the lights are already on.
This one needs Olarm and Home Assistant running in your house, so it’s a weekend job rather than 10 minutes. If you have it, this is the best thing your alarm can do that it currently does not.
01 Open your Olarm APP and go to Profile, then Devices, then select your device and switch on Allow API Access. Nothing works without this.
02 In Home Assistant, open HACS and add the Olarm repository as a custom repository, install the integration, then restart Home Assistant.
03 Go to Settings, Devices and Services, Add Integration, and choose Olarm. Log in with your Olarm account and select your device.
04 Check what appeared. You should now have your alarm's armed state, every zone, your PGM outputs and your utility keys, all as entities you can use.
05 Create the automation: Set the trigger to your alarm entity changing to triggered. Make the action to turn on whichever lights or smart plugs you want. Add the passage light as a second action.
06 Test it properly. Arm the system, trip a zone you do not mind setting off, and watch. Tell your control room first, so you don’t have to pay for a call-out because of us 😬.
Worth adding while you are in there. A second automation that turns the lights off after 20 minutes, and a notification so your phone tells you which zone tripped rather than just that something did.
If you’re not running Home Assistant, the simpler route is a PGM output on your panel wired to your outside lights, which your installer can set up, and you can then also control from the Olarm APP.
THE LIST
4 Deals to consider this week
Item | Where | Price |
|---|---|---|
TP-Link Tapo C220 pan-tilt AI camera | HiFi Corp | R599 |
Logitech MX Anywhere 3S compact mouse | Evetech | R999 |
Garmin Instinct Crossover smartwatch | Amazon SA | R5,173 |
Dyson V15 Submarine wet and dry vacuum | Bash | R12,999 |
The Tapo at R599 is the buy of the week, and that sale ends Tuesday. The Garmin is 46% off, the deepest cut we've seen on an Instinct. And the Dyson saves R5,000, the biggest single saving here.
