New DIY Security Trend in KC

Here’s the latest DIY home security and business security trend in the Kansas City area:

MOATS

I’ve seen them EVERYWHERE— cropping up since last week around businesses and homes in all neighborhoods I visited. Brookside, Waldo, North Kansas City, West Bottoms, East bottoms— we’re all in the same moat.

Effectiveness

But how effective are they?

I checked CrimeReports.com to find out if crime statistics changed when these moats started appearing. Is there a correlation?

Kansas City weather for the past week. Note that storms started Oct 5, 3 days ago.

Past week of crime in part of Brookside, Waldo, and Plaza areas of KC. LOTS of incidents!

Past 3 days of crime in part of Brookside, Waldo, and Plaza areas of KC. Very little crime shown.

You can see that way more than half of the reported incidents were before the rain started.

Conclusion and recommendations

To conclude, moats seem pretty effective. If your moat hasn’t shown up on its own yet— DIY one— start digging!

An actual moat in NKC MO

(Note: this post was not real research— I KNOW that there could be a reason for delay in reporting crimes to the CrimeReports.com website that would skew this. I’m just trying to find the humor in the flooded driveway and little ponds forming all around us, while there is more rain to come! I also know that a bunch of people have probably already actually studied this, and probably wrote many pages about it with footnotes and references. I’m revealing my social science background here.)

Controlling your home's alarm with connected automation Alexa, etc.

In this episode I demonstrate the inner struggle between the Luddite in me and the gadget lover (also in me).

Are you sure you want to have a microphone listening all of the time? Maybe I have trust issues. There have been so many hacking cases.

Didn’t we all dream about living in the Jetson’s house? We’re getting closer and closer.

I see the utility in these advances for those with mobility issues. I think it is wonderful. For the rest of us, though, I worry about how lazy we will become.  Is it really too much to flip the light switch manually? Is it a good use of our resources to make it so that we don;t have to get up?

Our Honeywell Systems with Total Connect are compatible with Alexa, so if you have one— you can give it a go. If you have a Honeywell system but not Total Connect, give us a call and we’ll help you get that set up.

There are a lot of ways you can use gadgets like Alexa— I think the setting of scenes would be the most useful. Try making a “go to sleep” scene or set of commands to make sure your house is locked and the system is armed, and turn off the lights without getting up, if you want.

That said, we are not tech support for Alexa or any of the home speakers. We’ll focus on security and fire systems, thank you.