Image Sensor Helps SafeMart Home Security Employee Capture Thief
As I’ve shared before, I love a good apprehension story that displays the advanced technology the industry offers its customers. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to come across several strong items, but my favorite by far comes from SafeMart Home Security.
As it turns out, a SafeMart employee, who asked to remain anonymous, was the recent victim of a home intrusion. He already had an Interlogix Simon XTi home security system with wireless video cameras, door and window sensors, motion sensors, and fire and smoke detectors installed. However, there was nothing to monitor his garage, which left him vulnerable to burglaries.
“I noticed that someone was stealing from my garage repeatedly over the course of several weeks,” he told me. “Each one came after nightfall. That’s when I decided to protect the garage.”
He installed SafeMart’s newest offering, the LiveWatch wireless motion-activated image sensor from Alarm.com, which works as both a wireless camera and wireless motion detector. If something or someone triggers the image sensor’s motion detector, an alarm activates and immediately contacts the LiveWatch Security monitoring center. Simultaneously, snapshots of whatever initiated the motion detector are automatically stored online or sent directly to the user’s iPhone, iPad, Android or other mobile device.
No sooner did the employee install the image sensor, a thief returned to the premises during the night. This time, the crook was in for a rude awakening when the alarm system sounded and scared off the intruder. While he escaped the scene of the crime, the sensor had already taken pictures of the suspect in the act.
“Police were able to apprehend the burglar just a few days after I gave them the image,” the SafeMart employee said. “The photos were eventually used in the criminal’s prosecution.”
This story is quite amazing in itself, but here’s the kicker — the image sensor helped capture the suspect while the product was still undergoing testing!
Although it is regrettable that his employee had to endure a string of break-ins, the experience adds a personal touch for the company to market to new and existing clientele, according to SafeMart President Chris Johnson.
“Our company’s goal is to expand the residential and light commercial market beyond our industry’s traditional 20% market share,” he said. “We want to find new ways to bring consumers to the home security and monitoring market to make it a bigger, better market for the whole industry. Catching a criminal during our testing phase with the image sensor immediately convinced us that this is a product that our customers need.”
Now that you’ve read this, I would like to hear from you. Do you have any personal apprehension experiences that you would like to share? If so, leave them in the comment section below.
Ashley Willis | Associate Editor
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