Fake Dog for Home Security

by tannercollin • 4 years ago

318 360 4 years ago

I met an older Australian woman that sailed around the world solo, and swore by the fake dog for scaring off opportunistic pirates. She didn’t carry a gun or other weapon. Just a cassette tape on repeat when anchored.

the_only_law2• 4 years ago

Why would pirates be scared of a dog though? They could just shoot it.

CoffeeOnWrite2• 4 years ago

For sure. I’d bring a gun, personally.

DonHopkins• 4 years ago

To scare off pirates at sea, I'd play Jaws Music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb8t3Lt8iJw

madaxe_again• 4 years ago

They could, or it could chew up a hand pretty well, or turn a robbery into a multiple murder, or any number of things. A dog doesn’t respond predictably or rationally.

Criminal doesn’t mean stupid - and you’re not going to bother with a risky target when there are other, less risky targets nearby.

olalonde• 4 years ago

I read "opportunistic pirate" as a regular unarmed person who might just be tempted to steal stuff from a seemingly unguarded ship.

registeredcorn3• 4 years ago

I would imagine a burglar would see two issues:

1) If there is a dog on the boat, maybe there's people too.

2) Plenty of other boats, why bother killing a dog and make lots of noise?

teknopaul3• 4 years ago

Outside the US most people don't carry guns, even pirates.

mellavora4• 4 years ago

Generally speaking weapons are a problem on boats. Many countries will require you to have a permit for it, which can be problematic to obtain. At the very least you have to declare it, which probably also means handing it over to the harbor authorities. Which means you don't have it when you would be most at risk and most need it.

Second, say you solve the above and decide to deploy the gun. You don't have a lot of time, and you don't know if the approaching boat is a pirate or a local fisherman who wants to sell you a fish. Make the wrong call, and bad things happen.

Say you solved the permit/registration issue by hiding the gun and then you deploy the gun. Bad things happen. Ok, it might have been justified and might have saved your life, but you are still probably going to jail for not declaring the weapon.

willcipriano2• 4 years ago

say you solve the above and decide to deploy the gun.

We're talking about a handgun not a artillery peice, "deployment" is taking it out of a biometric gun safe, 5 seconds max. Also you wouldn't open fire on someone just beacuse they are near your boat.

derefr• 4 years ago

Do you still generally need a permit if the "weapon" is part of the boat — for example, a harpoon gun mounted on a swivel — rather than something you can pick up and carry?

(My thinking being: pirates generally use speedboats, and a harpoon gun is plenty good at shooting holes in fiberglass and/or destroying outboard motors; and so pirates wouldn't want to get near your boat if you had one. But this sort of setup is not really useful for shooting at people — especially people less than 50ft away from the boat, which puts them in a "blind spot" for aiming, and especially not people who have already boarded — and so it would be irrelevant when docked.)

jonahx• 4 years ago

Say you solved the permit/registration issue by hiding the gun and then you deploy the gun. Bad things happen. Ok, it might have been justified and might have saved your life, but you are still probably going to jail for not declaring the weapon.

Is your argument that death is preferable to jail?

spapas82• 4 years ago

If the OP was in Europe he could be sued by the trespasser due to the GDPR for posting the trespasser photo on a website without his consent.

smcl• 4 years ago

Ha, it sounds possible but I'm not a GDPR expert. However one thing I do know is that you'd basically be publicly outing yourself as a burglar and the press would have a field day. Streisand effect - maybe better to just keep your head down and hope nobody recognises your blurry face :)

ghaff2• 4 years ago

You'd have to convince me that anyone in the EU has to basically get a model release from everyone they take a picture of in public before posting it anywhere on the web.

scrollaway• 4 years ago

Yeah, this isn't how it works at all, and GP is not a lawyer.

eertami• 4 years ago

In Switzerland (Europe but not EU I suppose) it would be illegal to have a home security camera in a public area like this - dashcams aren't legal for the same reason, they invade privacy without a justified lawful reason.

Being in the background of someone else's holiday photo isn't a problem, but you can't just post publicly identifying photos of people where they are the subject of the photo if you do not have consent.

duncan_idaho• 4 years ago

Don't think GDPR applies to individuals if its not commercial

bt1a• 4 years ago

This was clearly a jab that went over the heads of a lot of folks. Thanks for the cheap guffaw.

tiborsaas• 4 years ago

Door needs a hint. "By entering this property without prior approval from the owner you agree to the terms and conditions (see link)".

But seriously, that's not how GDPR works, people are using it as a replacement term for privacy. GDPR is aimed at companies, not individuals running a blog. You could still sue just under regular civil law.

mallomarmeasle• 4 years ago

"The dog has a lot of false positives"

Wow, just like my real dog!

Cthulhu_3• 4 years ago

Better false positives than a burglary I guess. Plus it's probably off when you're home... unless it's on at night as well.

Anyway, improvements can be made, I'm fairly sure there's off-the-shelf "is this a person" detectors out there.

jvanderbot4• 4 years ago

The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being triggered by car headlights or small animals.

To my dog, those are not false positives.

the_gipsy• 4 years ago

The dog has eliminated 100% of threats so far. Pretty effective.

sharkweek• 4 years ago

A sampling of things my lovable labrador has barked at over the last 48 hours:

- Birds

- Packages being delivered

- My neighbor, who he knows well, working in their back yard

- Me banging a door closed too hard

- A neighborhood cat taunting him on the sidewalk

- My kid dropping a toy on our hardwood

- ??? (He was barking at a closet door)

- Anytime I touch the hook where his leash hangs

- etc.

Still, love having his big bark around, even if when someone actually broke in he’d immediately befriend them.

pxc• 4 years ago

When it's really, really windy, my dog likes to stare out the window and bark at the trees for moving too much. (It took me a long time to even figure that one out.)

At the same time, he likes it when trees drop little pieces of fruit or seeds, like mesquite beans or pine cones. So on windy days sometimes he gets into a loop with a tree where he

  * stiffens up and barks at a tree for shaking its leaves
  * cautiously approaches the tree, sometimes growling
  * snatches something the tree has just dropped and runs away with it
  * runs around in circles with the tree debris, pausing and play bowing wvery now and then, batting it around with his paws, etc.
  * ... cautiously approaches the tree again

and so on, where he gradually gets bolder and more casual about approaching the rustling, swaying tree on each iteration.

(He's pretty suspicious of wind-related movement generally— he'll also yell at flags and banners sometimes.)

throwaway894345• 4 years ago

Man, was really hoping it was this one: https://nypost.com/2022/07/21/robot-dog-with-submachine-gun-...

jansan• 4 years ago

That would be the second (and more persuasive) line of defense.

mberning• 4 years ago

I can not stand thievery. And the brazen nature of it is so irksome. The fact that people need a fleet of security cameras and a fake dog to protect their home is ridiculous. These people should be caught and sent off to labor camps for a very, very long time.

tristor8• 4 years ago

One of the challenges of our modern society is that we've eliminated so much self-respect, after all look at social media. Without self-respect, you cannot build respect for others and their property. It is no surprise then that these types of incidents have become more brazen and more common. Any self-respecting person, then must determine how best to deal with this, because you cannot rely on others whether that be the police, the government, your community, or the would-be thieves themselves.

dymk2• 4 years ago

Breaking News: Facebook Causes Increase in Burglaries

But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about monotonically decreased throughout all of human development. To say that "modern society" has an increasing problem with burglaries due to a "lack of self respect", there's no evidence it's true, and there is evidence to the contrary.

Before you point out the bump in some crime types in recent years, let me remind you that recent years have not been typical, nor easy on our generally monotonically-improving social safety nets. Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. Lower, lower lower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...

Cthulhu_3• 4 years ago

I mean that's the "revenge" school of thought, but there's two others; "rehabilitation", where people are re-educated otherwise, and the more difficult one... why do people steal in the first place?

In practice it'll be things like poverty, lack of other opportunities, etc. Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop.

But that sounds too much like socialism.

wollsmoth2• 4 years ago

Different people respond to different things. But I do think the US system is a bit too punitive. A lot of states have stuff like free community college for those who want it. But guess what? they still have a lot of car radios and catalytic converters being stolen.

tristor8• 4 years ago

Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop.

I agree with everything but the first word of this sentence, "give". The challenge is that you cannot "give" someone self-respect, purpose in life, or gratitude. These are things which must be internally developed by people through their life experiences. The best we can do as a society is improving early childhood development and parenting, but once someone is an adult, it is exceptionally difficult to impossible to change someone's direction absent any desire to change on that person's part.

The people doing these things are generally young adults or adults. Someone is not breaking into my garage to steal my tools because of "poverty" except in the most abstract definition. Generally, it's to feed a drug addiction, a drug addiction the person acquired due to self-medicating for ennui and depression or other mental health issues, mental health issues that may be partially caused by environment or genetics (we don't know, social / psych science is not there yet), and contributed to by the state of society and a complete lack of self-respect (someone with self-respect wouldn't stoop to theft).

The opposition to your mode of thinking isn't "oh no socialism", it's about complete elimination of accountability, respect, ethics, and root cause analysis as part of the process. You cannot "give" someone an improvement in their internal state. Or as the saying goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink."

jvanderbot4• 4 years ago

In small communities (think, hundreds), thievery is much, much harder. People just "know" who the thieving-types are, or can find out pretty quick by gossip. And what would they do, build a house with the saw they stole? Sell it ... back to me?

If I knew everyone I could possibly see sneaking around my house, it's pretty simple to go talk to their parents/ siblings / spouse to get them straightened out. If I didn't know, it doesn't take long to gossip my way into likely suspects.

It's another responsibility we offloaded to the state, and it is now impossible to recognize people on the street, and so there's an infinite set of people each thief could exploit. This isn't bad per se (see witch hunts and mob rule), it's just a modern exploit.

sophacles• 4 years ago

So you are opposed to the concept of "equal response"?

jck• 4 years ago

Obviously, crime sucks and society needs criminals to face some sort of consequence but your take (vengeance) is pretty sad and lacking to me. You need to understand that most of these sorts of crimes are committed by people in terrible socioeconomic conditions and you seem like you have the privilege to not know what that sort of despair feels like and how it can break people.

AlwaysRock• 4 years ago

This is awesome. It will probably bark more than my actual dog haha

jlturner• 4 years ago

I can attest to having a barking dog being an excellent deterrent. One night about a year ago, somebody was snooping around our backyard (we saw them on the security camera), one sharp bark (from the little dog no less, our bigger dog isn’t much of a barker) sent the snooper running.

I’ve long thought that this could / should be a simple home security system. Glad to see somebody did it and that it worked for them!

nano9• 4 years ago

A Python script kept alive by Supervisor

I laughed a little. Sometimes the job needs to be done quickly and in a familiar way, I suppose.

uhtred• 4 years ago

Why is that funny? (asking genuinely)

89vision• 4 years ago

OP should have used k8s to scale their workload

hgazx2• 4 years ago

I liked supervisor but I disliked how slow it was. Systemd is doing the same job for me now at lightning speed.

omginternets2• 4 years ago

I saw a rather comical sign posted in the first-floor window of a Philadelphia apartment. It had a silhouette of a German shepherd and text beneath, which read:

I can get from the second-story floor to the front door in 1.2 seconds. Can you?

teekert• 4 years ago

There are many variations, near my place there is a sign with a picture of dog saying: "I don't bite, I amputate." I also saw a sign with a picture of a Gun: "Forget about the dog, I rule here."

koolba2• 4 years ago

There’s also the classic: “Dont beware of the dog, beware of the owner”

tacitusarc• 4 years ago

In case this isn’t common knowledge, advertising you have a gun on premise makes you a more attractive target for burglaries

blowski2• 4 years ago

My labrador would run to the front door in 1.2s, but then roll over and demand to be stroked.

ushakov• 4 years ago

a Golden Retriever would be happy to show you around and help you pack the loot

Veen2• 4 years ago

Same. My Springer Spaniel puppy would roll over and pee with excitement.

copperx5• 4 years ago

Is the 1.2s timing standardized among breeds? Or is it a General Dynamics dog?

IIAOPSW• 4 years ago

I want to break into your apartment, pet your dog and leave without a trace.

sumo893• 4 years ago

I grew up with 2 labradors that were huge attention seekers. One worked out how to open the back gate and if he escaped he knew we'd find him in a certain retired neighbours garden getting strokes and biscuits. That said, one time someone did break in to our house and the labs kept them pinned by the front door until the police arrived.

runjake5• 4 years ago

It should be mentioned here that posting these kinds of macho signs are not a good idea. They may open you up to criminal and/or civil penalties, depending on your local laws and the whims of the judicial system.

“He was just looking to waste somebody!”

I cringe any time I read my local neighborhood watch Facebook group and some internet tough guy comments with “They (criminal) better not show up at my house!”

userbinator• 4 years ago

I think it very heavily depends on where you live.

sumo893• 4 years ago

Also if you have a Dangerous Dog signand your dog does then injure someone it's clear you knew the dog could cause damage. There was the case recently, Jacqueline Durand, who went to dog sit, opened the door and got attacked by 2 pitbulls. The owners tried to argue their dogs weren't violent despite the attack but the fact they had a sign up was one of the major points against them and was included specifically in the lawsuit.

marcodiego2• 4 years ago

This one became famous in Brazil: https://g1.globo.com/mg/triangulo-mineiro/eu-amo-meu-pet/not...

It means "cute but ordinary".

moomoo11• 4 years ago

Boston Dynamics pupper: I’m behind you

Or it’s already locked in a precision drone strike on your location.

ge96• 4 years ago

I thought it was going to be like a physical one, but the sound makes sense.

arsome• 4 years ago

Unless you have a dog that's trained to attack, generally they're pretty docile with just a treat or two, might be good enough to stop opportunistic crimes though.

ARandomerDude• 4 years ago

They don't attack but they do alarm.

FredPret3• 4 years ago

I emigrated from a third-world country to Canada. One of the first things I noticed was the docility of the dogs.

Maybe back in the third world they pick up on their humans’ stress. There, they’d definitely attack at any opportunity.

duxup10• 4 years ago

I noticed was the docility of the dogs.

Depending on where you're from, some places spay / neutering dogs is much less common. It can impact their behavior a great deal.

300bps2• 4 years ago

The house of a friend of mine was broken into. It was someone who went to every house in a neighborhood, broke whatever glass they could find with whatever was on hand (mostly paving stones) and went into the house. Dog didn't deter them at all. For his large (for the breed) black lab the burglar just grabbed a towel, waited for the dog to bite on it and then maneuvered the dog into a bedroom and locked the dog in there. Then ransacked the house in 5 minutes and moved onto the next house.

duxup10• 4 years ago

I suspect most burglaries are just that, opportunistic. If there's some sense of extra risk or hassle, they're on to the next opportunity.

remir• 4 years ago

My brother in law's father had 2 German Shepards trained to guard his commerce and one night the burglars came in and killed them both. Very sad.

jvanderbot4• 4 years ago

Yes, unfortunately if you're being specifically targeted, they'll probably know about your dogs and have a plan.

joegahona• 4 years ago

I was going to add something similar. There was a rash of petty burglaries in my neighborhood about 10 years ago, in broad daylight. Cops told me they were meth heads and didn't care about dogs -- they'd either risk the dog leaving them alone or harm the dog to get their business done.

jvanderbot4• 4 years ago

This is such an armchair take that I hear over and over. Classic rock-paper-scissors thinking.

If a rat were in your living room, you'd not want to go in there. Rats will almost never actually harm you, probably less than a dog. You can easily scare them out. But it's terrifying when one dashes across the room. It's biological/instinctive.

Yet an unknown dog in an unknown house that's actually aware of you and mad about it? No way. Off to another target.

basicplus2• 4 years ago

All dogs attack posties

300bps2• 4 years ago

This along with a fake TV lighting source on a timer will deter most people casing your house.

I got the fake TV lighting source generator on Amazon probably 15 years ago - really looks like someone is watching TV in the room.

duxup10• 4 years ago

When I bought a house I picked up a dog dish and put it by my walkout basement sliding door. Also the pond next to my house has old tennis balls show up in it now and then so I put them next to the dish.

According to the local cops break ins in my area are mostly just kids going into open garage / garage side doors / back doors that are left open and stuff to steal is out and obvious and so on.

I figure just the sense of hassle / unknown of "who knows how this dog is" might be enough of a deterrent.

Nextgrid2• 4 years ago

A "beware of the dog" sign would probably be just as (if not more) effective regardless of whether there's an actual dog.

dragonwriter3• 4 years ago

I doubt it.

A dog and a sign send different messages, and the message of the sign is “the resident is afraid of being robbed”.

EDIT:

I want to make explicit that I am comparing something that gives the impression of a dog without a sign vs a sign with no other evidence of a dog. I am explicitly not commenting on the message sent by a sign combined with other evidence of a dog, just “fake (but, for the sake of argument, convincing) dog” vs. “dog sign”, each alone, as deterrents.

bjt1234• 4 years ago

Dont over estimate how dumb they are.

Installed security cameras, they still came onto the property.

So, next I installed a sign "BEWARE OF THE SECURITY CAMERA", and didn't work, infact one guy broke into my car and simply just covered his face from the canera.

So then I installed a cheap security light next to the sign that would light up when they entered.

That worked.

cudgy• 4 years ago

For larger properties, a “Beware of Unexploded Land Mines” might work too. Or copy Vladimir the Impailer’s technique of using scarecrows impailed on stakes with the word “Thief” drawn on them.

Might scare the neighbors away too though, but that’s not always a bad thing.

pg_bot• 4 years ago

I wonder if a more effective deterrent would be communicating that you are an abusive and neglectful dog owner. 'Beware of dog' signs communicate to me that a person is responsible and they don't want to be sued in case of an accident. If there was a sign outside that was just a silhouette of a pit bull with the words 'dog fighter' underneath, I would not want to rob that house.

Bloating• 4 years ago

"Warning: Protected by a cloud connected camera which will violate your right to privacy"

101008• 4 years ago

After living in a dangerous city my whole life, I think living in a place where break ins are consequences of owners being lazy would be awesome.

duxup10• 4 years ago

The sleepy suburbs have their downsides, but also their upsides for sure.

kube-system9• 4 years ago

Crimes of opportunity are also the most common crimes in places with more crime.

What’s awesome is living somewhere that crimes of opportunity don’t even happen. There are still places where people don’t lock doors because they don’t need to.

iamthepieman• 4 years ago

Worst break in I've ever had was a skunk. Came in through a sliding door left open for ventilation on a hot summer night. Woke up to scuffling under my bed. Using my phone light I saw the telltale black with white stripe tail sticking out from under the bed and froze.

Sat in bed for a minute pondering my sad and mostly likely odorous fate. Finally walked on furniture to the bedroom door while the skunk was apparently chewing my leather shoes, set a trail of cheese leading out the sliding door and sat in silence and darkness on the stairs overlooking the cheese trail.

Eventually it came sniffling out methodically gobbling cheese right back out to where it belonged.

Got a locking screen door after that...and a new pair of loafers.

hgazx2• 4 years ago

What kind of area has a significant amount of kids walking into peoples garages and stealing stuff?!

garborg2• 4 years ago

I grew up in sheltered outer suburbs where it's hard for kids to get around on their own, and older kids turn to some nonproductive amusements -- was surprised to hear a friend tell me he liked (after dusk) freeing trailers to watch them roll into cars.

duxup10• 4 years ago

A nice suburb with almost no other crime to speak of ;)

edm0nd• 4 years ago

Chicago

actually_a_dog2• 4 years ago

In any case, the cost of a dog bowl and some free tennis balls is minimal compared to the potential benefit if even one break-in is prevented.

When I sold security systems, I learned that one of those lawn signs alone that says "Protected by XYZ Security" has a deterrent factor. Cameras (even if they're fake or deactivated/unmonitored) also have a pretty significant deterrent factor. See https://www.angi.com/articles/do-security-signs-and-decals-s...

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

"Protected by Glock"

registeredcorn3• 4 years ago

I agree with the majority of your statement, but I would personally shy away from a specific "Monitored by company" sign, because I try to avoid advertising my security procedures. "Oh, they use Y instead of X? Guess I'll need to bring that other device, instead." I suppose a home owner could be really tricky, and just buy the sign for Y, but have a security system for X?

Oh! On a technical note, I was watching a TV show recently (Better Call Saul...?) where someone broke into a persons house undetected. When the home owner found the person and asked how they got in so easily, the person stated that they "Cut the phone line", and that was apparently all it took. Know if there's any truth to that?

sizzle• 4 years ago

There is a “guard” feature for the Ring home security setup that plays dog bark noises from your Alexa speakers if motion if is detected or doorbell is rung, etc. and random lights turn on at night, super cool features.

Hippocrates2• 4 years ago

Most family dogs will just roll over for belly rubs once the burglar is inside, but the barking is a great deterrent because it draws attention. The burglar has no idea if that is normal or not, and if someone else might hear it and come investigate.

kqr• 4 years ago

In this spirit, I remember an ex-burglar on reddit saying that small dogs are the best guard dogs, because big ones typically have to be trained to be nice, but small ones just don't shut up.

jimt12342• 4 years ago

This is 100% accurate (small dogs are better for home security). Uh, speaking for a friend.

cptcobalt• 4 years ago

Actually, I wonder why the consistent barking is more easily trained out of bigger dogs than smaller dogs. Anecdotally, my big husky rarely barks (usually only during play, or when "talking" with us), but my small shiba will never shut up if she hears a noise at the door.

giardini• 4 years ago

My favorite Far Side cartoon depicting a small (but smart) dachsund:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/66/1b/67661bbc78344ddcbd32...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=far+side+cartoon+usual+barking+fre...

Hippocrates2• 4 years ago

I get package thefts, people pissing on my entryway, and general creeping late night. Of course I have a doorbell cam but it doesn't help. I've now set up a homekit automation which triggers via the doorbell's motion sensor. It flicks the exterior and interior hall lights on via smart switch, one after the other with a slight random jitter, to create the illusion of someone about to come out the door.

reaperducer3• 4 years ago

For those looking for a simpler, cheaper solution, you can buy exterior light bulbs with built-in motion sensors for about $15.

It scores exactly zero geek cred, but it works if you're renting and don't want to go the full-blown home automation route.

ChoGGi• 4 years ago

Thanks for that, perfect for my porch light.

swayvil• 4 years ago

Here's a nasty story.

Small college town. Nice, lots of bookstores. Retired professors. Food co-op etc

Once excellent school, now on the skids. Student population in decline.

Local student-housing management companies, slumlords, etc, are alarmed. They're losing money.

Solution. State-subsidized housing of low income families and ex-prisoners.

Nice college town now has riots and shootings every night. Burglaries of nice retired professors' homes skyrocket.

Town builds new triple-sized police station.

240P_Climate• 4 years ago

Soon all of America will be like this and we cant wait. No more white privilege for you ;)

Wistar3• 4 years ago

How about barking and a door shaker mechanism to rattle the door as if the dog is throwing itself against the door in an effort to get to the intruder?

mxuribe3• 4 years ago

Now that is scary! My partner's parents had a doberman pincher years ago that often went crazy to try to get through the front door to attack whoever was on the other side - that is, if they were not a family member/friend - and one time he cracked the door, and very nearly broke through. He was just overall crazy and crazy strong for a dog. I can only imagine anything like that, even if only a little door shaking , would be pretty scary.

Wistar3• 4 years ago

So, add the sound of splintering wood?

Dnguyen• 4 years ago

We installed X-10 barking dog modules 20 years ago. https://www.powerhouse.eu/en/home-security/46-x10-dk10-barki...

reaperducer3• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the late 70's and early 80's when car alarms were becoming popular. You could buy fake scary-looking "Car alarm enabled" stickers for your window at Radio Shack. You could also buy a little box that stuck to your dashboard that was nothing more than a blinking light, in order to reinforce the thought.

Back then it was not uncommon for car alarm installers to advertise their work on the driver's side windows of the cars. "Protected by Viper!" Stuff like that.

I remember the first time I saw a car like that. It was in the parking lot of an amusement park. I threw a bunch of road trip crackers on the car, and let the seagulls have a party.

They didn't seem to care about the computer voice: "Warning! This car protected by Viper! Stand away from the car!" -bloop!- -bloop!- -bloop!- -bloop!- -weee-awwww!- -weee-awwww!- -weee-awwww!- -booo-weeep!- -booo-weeep!- -booo-weeep!- -fweeeeeeeep!- -fweeeeeeeep!- -haaaaaank!- -haaaaaank!- -haaaaaank!- -haaaaaank!- And so on.

fblp• 4 years ago

Would be great if this could be setup with Google home or Alexa!

nyingpo• 4 years ago

It reminds me of a story that made the news[0] some years ago.

The local police received complaints that a dog was being mistreated, chained on the same spot for days.

Arriving at the scene they found out that an elderly couple were using a Rottweiler statue for keeping burglars away from their house.

OP's fake dog is a great improvement over that one!

[0] https://g1.globo.com/mg/sul-de-minas/noticia/2019/05/09/pm-e...

marcodiego2• 4 years ago

A dog was mistaken for a lion: https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/labradoodle-m...

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

Beards of similar length and greyness to mine might remember this was a project, probably from the brow of R. A Penfold posted in a monthly electronics magazine. Damnit, I can still recall a schematic: ORP12 and LED + lens broken beam detector, 555 timer as clock, 74590 binary counter, an EEPROM, 8 bit DAC and push-pull power amplifier based on TIP30/31 transistors. IIRC the crazy part was you needed to build an EEPROM programmer as step one, and hand program the sound sample using a BBC micro parallel port. Digitised dog barks were available by floppy disk in the mail.

cbozeman2• 4 years ago

Don't get a fake dog for home security.

Get a real gun. Then go to a tactical trainer who has served in the military ideally in a small arms instructor capacity - they're all over the nation - and inquire about home defense courses.

And don't get a "handgun", get an AR-15 "pistol". That is, an AR-15 platform, a stabilizing brace, and a shortened barrel. If you're unsure what all this means, don't worry, your local firearms dealer will almost certainly know and understand if you come in and ask for those things. If a break-in occurs, you'll be too nervous and too frightened to aim well with your standard 9mm handgun. An AR-15 with a stabilizing brace and a shortened barrel with a vertical forward grip is sturdy, you can brace it against your shoulder (obviously), and it has sufficient power to stop an intruder.

At the end of the day, you and only you are responsible for your own safety. Even if you live in a gated community, you cannot count on your local security or law enforcement to arrive quickly enough to save you. Remember the old adage. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

MonkeyMalarky2• 4 years ago

The author's use case is for when they are out town.

nautilus50• 4 years ago

Don't get an AR-15, Get an RPG-29.

clansimus• 4 years ago

Don't get an RPG-29, get an F-18.

res0nat0r• 4 years ago

This is specifically for when he isn't home as mentioned in first sentence of the article.

I set up a fake dog that barks if my surveillance cameras are triggered while I'm out of town on vacation.

Also owning a gun actually increases your chances of homicide at home.

https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do-guns-m...

zorpner• 4 years ago

Wow, what a great way to kill yourself and/or your family. Thanks for the tip!

wheybags2• 4 years ago

Wtf, no.

bluetidepro• 4 years ago

I kept reading this and kept waiting for the "/sarcasm" or something at the end. I really hope this is satire (even if not explicitly said)...

mberger• 4 years ago

I think this needs a disclaimer that it only works in a failed state.

jabroni_salad• 4 years ago

Hello, can you please advise how I can use the gun to protect my home when I am "out of town on vacation" as quoted from the article. I will actually be taking a trip in august so this dicussion is quite timely. thanks.

turtlebits• 4 years ago

Setup the sentry gun from Aliens :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU

chadash• 4 years ago

To add credence to this post, I once heard an interview with an incarcerated burglar who claimed that dogs where the one deterrent that scared him off. He said that an alarm as only as good as the response times of the police and he's usually in and out of there in five minutes anyway. But who wants to risk it with a dog? Better to just move on to the next house.

A few more tips:

- Best place to hide valuables is in the kitchen pantry. Master bedroom is the most common place, but who is gonna think to go through your snack food.

- A lot of burglaries happen in the winter in the late afternoon or early evening when it is starting to get dark out, but before the homeowners get home from work.

- Your house is only as strong as the weakest link. Fancy locks can be bypassed by breaking a window. Design your security system to handle low level burglars (who probably don't know how to pick a lock), not foreign spies. For most people, this also holds true for online security.

larrik• 4 years ago

who is gonna think to go through your snack food

Your kids and your houseguests, that's who!

djhworld• 4 years ago

I remember watching a thing from another ex-burglar who said dogs are a good deterrent but you can overcome them if you distract them with food, e.g. dropping a big bag of dog food all over the floor. He said it was a risky strategy though and probably not worth the effort.

askvictor• 4 years ago

A trained guard dog will only eat when given a command. Even my (non-guard dog) will attack a perceived intruder before going for food; adrenaline/perceived threat trumps food.

el_benhameen• 4 years ago

“ The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being triggered by car headlights or small animals.”

That’s ok, the original version can also be triggered by small animals and cars.

kelseyfrog2• 4 years ago

The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being triggered by car headlights or small animals.

To be fair, actual dogs have a lot of false positives too, so it's not too dissimilar.

ComputerCat• 4 years ago

ahah oh my gosh I love this! Neat project, thanks for sharing!

nimbius• 4 years ago

anecdotal story: my old rottweiler pepper once stopped a neighborhood kid from stealing a plasma cutter out of my garage. her pups had recently littered next to the lawnmower and she was sleeping under the table saw at the time. she had managed to chew him up badly enough to need an ambulance, and at the time it was a pretty horrifying experience for everyone involved, but eight years later his parents and I are pretty good friends. ive even driven him to a substance abuse program a few times.

vxNsr• 4 years ago

ive even driven him to a substance abuse program a few times.

I’m sorry.

dvtrn3• 4 years ago

The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being triggered by car headlights or small animals.

My real dog has the same feature, so you’re at least doing a good job mimicking nature, heh.

kleer001• 4 years ago

Interesting! They might be both working from a similar algorithm.

smsm424• 4 years ago

The dog also doesn't come with an off switch in case you have an important meeting with your CEO, taking it in your home office and there's a squirrel running around...

dvtrn3• 4 years ago

Oh dear. Can’t say I’ve had that problem...really ever.

How many squirrels have you had to chase/escort out so far?

mlcrypto2• 4 years ago

That reminds me of the argument about sentience lately. Why can't a neural network be sentient if all our actions have been trained by interacting with the world since birth?

netr0ute• 4 years ago

If our minds are like computer neural networks, then we can only achieve sentience by priming an existing "human person" neural model with data, which is how every human has worked.

tremon• 4 years ago

The operative word in your comment being "actions". What "actions" can (current generation) neural networks undertake? Can they initiate anything? Can they choose their own learning material? Can they even choose when or whether to repeat a certain training set?

There was a recent HN comment about this that I think illustrates the point well [0]:

experimentation is an act on the world to set its state and then measure it. That's what learning involves. These machines do not act on the world, they just capture correlations.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201757

uj8efdjkfdshf• 4 years ago

Because most people define sentience as 'a black box that reacts meaningfully to inputs in a sufficiently unpredictable and inexplicable manner', and for most people (especially researchers in these fields), current neural networks do not meet this bar.

goindeep• 4 years ago

Haha came here to say the same thing. My stupid dog barks at everything. The wind, the sun, the rain, ants, if he thinks im home, if he thinks im leaving, if he sees me, if he doesnt see me, he even barks in his friggin sleep. Does he bark when he needs to take a piss or a shit and needs to go outside? Nope. Prick.

worthless-trash2• 4 years ago

Train your dog to piss or shit. If your dog likes food it should be very possible.

wadely• 4 years ago

It's definitely a feature. Next door get a delivery? Trigger!

FerretFred• 4 years ago

Came here to say that :) Our recently-adopted rescue terrier will bark at anything. Right now he's especially targeting birds that dare to land on our (his!) bird feeder.

rejectedstone• 4 years ago

Certainly a feature. I recommend a sensitivity level which uses breeds for each level. I further recommend the highest sensitivity be "Great Pyrenees" as I can attest my dog barks at every false positive.

karmaup• 4 years ago

v2. A running toy dog with speaker playing barking sound -- natural sound of steps plus a moving sound source

libraryatnight• 4 years ago

Here's a video from a former burglar talking about break ins and I linked specifically to the section on dogs: https://youtu.be/DtwD-c9hn58

sitkack• 4 years ago

If you want to make the sound more authentic, paws/claws on the floor would do a lot. It makes it sound like the dog is present in the immediate environment.

sunshi23• 4 years ago

This need to run on a back up power system in case they cut the power before enter

SMAAART• 4 years ago

Soon an add-on device for Alexa, Siri, Google home.

Actually I might buy one myself.

whereisanykey• 4 years ago

The extension kit include a fake dog door, dog bowl, chewed up bone, and fake dog poo (large).

mxxx• 4 years ago

When I was a kid, we had one of these things and it was triggered by a motion sensor. But we _also_ had a large taxidermied dog sitting in the window. Used to really trip people out.

brazed_blotch• 4 years ago

I used to walk home from school past a neighbour who had a similar system.

The speakers were quite pathetic, so we figured out it was a recording pretty quickly. And so we took to running past the house again and again, triggering the barking noise to our delight.

A few weeks later, the system was removed.

schwartzworld• 4 years ago

Don't get a greyhound. Odds are the burglar wouldn't even know my dog was there.

Fake Dog for Home Security

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