It’s often said that Britain is a nation of animal lovers. 90% of our staff have pets of their own and so we do understand how important a pet is to their owner.
It is distressful enough for some pets when you go out and leave them at home alone, we would not want to add to that stress by providing the wrong sort of detection.
There are several ways that your property can be protected, allowing your pet to roam free inside. One way is perimeter protection, which includes seismic or vibration detectors on your doors and windows; before wireless alarm systems this option was very disruptive as it meant running cables to every door and window and was quite expensive, as to do this neatly was very time consuming. The most popular way is to use pet tolerant motion detectors.
There are many manufacturers that produce pet tolerant detectors, sadly many of them do not use sophisticated technology, they just have a thicker lens at the bottom so that they do not see anything moving on the floor.
How do proper pet friendly detectors work?
A passive infra-red (PIR) detector is designed to detect movement of body heat (passive infra-red energy). The detector is permanently checking for differences in the thermal environment. An empty room’s passive infra-red energy tends to be quite stable and not prone to change rapidly. However the moment a person enters the room the infra-red emitted from a human is seen as a big change in the environment and the detector triggers the alarm.
A microwave detector uses the radar doppler effect. It works by continuously sending out microwave signals. These signals will return to the sensor in consistent intervals based on the objects in the room. If motion occurs, the timing of these signals will change, and the sensor will send a signal to the system.
Proper pet friendly detectors use both PIR and microwave. The microwave works out the distance and the PIR works out the size. For example something small close up to a standard PIR would amount to something quite big moving in the room, but because the microwave can tell how far away the object is, the detector can calculate that the object is small but close. On the other hand if an intruder comes in through a window at the opposite end of the room from the detector, the PIR sees motion that could be dog size but the microwave sees how far away the motion is and the detector calculates it is something much bigger than a dog or cat and activates.
Pet tolerant alarms are not just about the right detection though, if you put a pet tolerant detector in the wrong place it is never going to work or it is always going to be triggered by the pet. To get a true pet friendly alarm system that you can rely on you need the right advice and the right detection.
