MannyC
Enthusiast
So I leave for a short 3 day trip out of state. At my house I have 2 of my Vipers in my garage along with my motorcycle and a bmw. At about 2:30am Sat morning, I get a call on my cell phone from the Security Alarm Monitoring company showing that my home alarm was triggered and the security code was not entered to turn it off and they have dispatched the police to my house. My gal calls me and is in tears telling me she was alseep and had the house alarm on with the motion sensors off (so the large dogs we have can sleep in the house and wander around.) She says as she scrambled out of bed, she runs to the bedroom key pad and sees that the alarm says it was one of the garage doors that was opened that triggered the alarm. She runs down the hall to the room that has the door that leads out into the garage to make sure it is locked, and it was. At this point, she hears scuffling in the garage and is freaking out. She calls 911 and is on the phone with them until the police arrive some 15 mins later or so. When the police gets there, they see that my Viper SRT-10 passenger door is open, and that the dolly I had sitting behind the car (blocking its exit) was thrown into my yard. Other than that, nothing seems to be missing, as they only had about 60 seconds from the time they got into the garage until the time the alarm went blazing on the entire house.
The garage door was some how opened from the outside. We have several garage door openers which are all accounted for. The thieves could have grabbed wheels, or other valuable parts I had sitting there, but they were interested in either the SRT-10 or the stereo set up inside of it. So while I was out of town, I start thinking that perhaps somebody broke into my Hummer H2 which was parked at a PARK AND RIDE over by the airport, grabbed my garage remote out of there, grabbed my registration so they could get my address, and since my H2 is parked there, they would know I was on a flight, so they go to steal while I am away. Well, nothing was wrong with my Hummer when I got in tonight. Garage door opener was in there.
So, I am assuming the thieves had a code buster of some kind. I am guessing garage door frequencies aren't very difficult to crack/duplicate.
I never arm my car alarms in the garage since I have the house alarm, and the Viper has an aftermarket alarm system with a perimeter sensor, and sometimes it just goes off in the garage if its armed and parked too close to the wall or something, so I leave it off at home.
So, I was wondering what you guys have done, if anything, to secure your garage so that thieves aren't busting in in the middle of the night to steal your stuff?
I'm thinking about at least putting up some motion sensor flood lights outside the garage -- right now it is almost pitch black on my street and people could be at my garage doors and nobody would see them since there is only moon light.
Not sure what to do about the garage door opener frequency and keeping people from being able to so easily pop them open. Ideas? I have 3 Vipers I keep in my garage when all are accounted for, and I want them safe and not having to deal with an insurance company.
-Manny
The garage door was some how opened from the outside. We have several garage door openers which are all accounted for. The thieves could have grabbed wheels, or other valuable parts I had sitting there, but they were interested in either the SRT-10 or the stereo set up inside of it. So while I was out of town, I start thinking that perhaps somebody broke into my Hummer H2 which was parked at a PARK AND RIDE over by the airport, grabbed my garage remote out of there, grabbed my registration so they could get my address, and since my H2 is parked there, they would know I was on a flight, so they go to steal while I am away. Well, nothing was wrong with my Hummer when I got in tonight. Garage door opener was in there.
So, I am assuming the thieves had a code buster of some kind. I am guessing garage door frequencies aren't very difficult to crack/duplicate.
I never arm my car alarms in the garage since I have the house alarm, and the Viper has an aftermarket alarm system with a perimeter sensor, and sometimes it just goes off in the garage if its armed and parked too close to the wall or something, so I leave it off at home.
So, I was wondering what you guys have done, if anything, to secure your garage so that thieves aren't busting in in the middle of the night to steal your stuff?
I'm thinking about at least putting up some motion sensor flood lights outside the garage -- right now it is almost pitch black on my street and people could be at my garage doors and nobody would see them since there is only moon light.
Not sure what to do about the garage door opener frequency and keeping people from being able to so easily pop them open. Ideas? I have 3 Vipers I keep in my garage when all are accounted for, and I want them safe and not having to deal with an insurance company.
-Manny