Driveway alarms; do they work?

[mjncad]

Northern Tool has Chamberlain and Mighty Mule driveway alarm systems.

Chamberlain Wireless Motion Alert System, Model# CWA2000 | Motion Detection | Northern Tool + Equipment

Mighty Mule Wireless Driveway Alarm, Model FM231 | Motion Detection | Northern Tool + Equipment

Do either one of these work worth a darn? Are there other brands worth considering?

Or is this another good idea gone bad due to Chinese manufacturing?

 

[beenthere]

Recently discussed.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/188541-wireless-driveway-motion-alert-alarm.html

 

[LostInTheWoods]

mjncad:

Here's another discussion link on this topic:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/183899-wireless-long-range-motion-detectors.html

I have the older version of the Chamberlain model you linked to. Works fine for me. Its not fancy, and will false alarm if deer or turkey cross in front of it (but that's rare). It is mounted about 400 feet from the house.

 

[SOS]

Yes I have one that works great. Its about 800 feet from the house. every once in a while a dear dances around it it goes off too and when my wife flies down the driveway at 50 miles it doesn't ring.

 

[BobRip]

I have one and am very satisfied. Deer do give an alarm and also when it rains we don't detect the car. Still, we like it a lot.

 

[mjncad]

Thanks guys for all the opinions and links!

 

[jinman]

I have the Mighty Mule FM231 wireless. It wouldn't work at 300' from my house because a tree was in the way, but it works perfectly at about 150' from the house. The alarm is loud enough to hear and has a unique 4-part cycle that gets our attention everytime there is a mail or UPS delivery. I buried the sender beside my driveway and it is never triggered by animals nor any other false alarm that I know of.

The only fault I have with the design is that you have to drive the pipe into the ground to mount the transmitter. You can't do that with a wire to the magnetic sensor coming out the bottom, so what I did was to drive the PVC pipe and then drill a hole in the side for the wire. They should have suggested that in the instructions. I can just see where some people would try to drive the pipe with a wire coming out the bottom and end up cutting the wire. That part of the design is lacking in my opinion.

 

[skipmarcy]

I have the Mighty Mule FM231 wireless. It wouldn't work at 300' from my house because a tree was in the way, but it works perfectly at about 150' from the house. The alarm is loud enough to hear and has a unique 4-part cycle that gets our attention everytime there is a mail or UPS delivery. I buried the sender beside my driveway and it is never triggered by animals nor any other false alarm that I know of.

The only fault I have with the design is that you have to drive the pipe into the ground to mount the transmitter. You can't do that with a wire to the magnetic sensor coming out the bottom, so what I did was to drive the PVC pipe and then drill a hole in the side for the wire. They should have suggested that in the instructions. I can just see where some people would try to drive the pipe with a wire coming out the bottom and end up cutting the wire. That part of the design is lacking in my opinion.

Yep, I have the same unit. My first Mighty Mule didn't have the buried sensor - it was all contained in the transmitter head on the pvc pipe. What a piece of junk !! False alarms all the time (sunspots ?) They had a recall on those and I got the current unit you describe. Much more reliable, maybe only 2 or 3 false alarms in almost a year now. Mine is about 250' from the receiver in the house and my house has 29 ga metal siding - picks up the signal just fine and of course this type of unit isn't affected by anything other than metallic objects breaking the field or possibly other electrical fields (sunspots ?) Critters/people have no affect on it.

 

[Sackett2]

Mom and Dad have one, one problem is that the dogs have gotten lazy.... they bark when it goes off. the deer trigger it at night, mom shuts it off after 9 pm now.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

how deep do you have to bury the mighty mule sensor?

 

[ITHINKICAN]

Yes I have one that works great. Its about 800 feet from the house. every once in a while a dear dances around it it goes off too and when my wife flies down the driveway at 50 miles it doesn't ring.

:laughing: Hilarious !!

 

[skipmarcy]

how deep do you have to bury the mighty mule sensor?

It's not absolutely necessary to bury it for it to work - just keeps it all underground so you can mow over it etc. I buried mine grass side about 8" - 10" from where the gravel meets the grass along the edge of my driveway and about 6" or 8" deep. Then I let the wire run underground from there about another 2' or so in and stuck the PVC pipe w/transmitter. The transmitter is about 18" - 20" tall when installed sturdily in the dirt. They give you quite a bit of wire if you need to place the transmitter further away, possibly in some bushes or whatever to hide it if you want.

 

[jinman]

+1 to what skipmarcy said. I buried mine about 1' deep and the wire to the transmitter is about 12' to 15' long. They will sell you a sensor with a 50' cable, but it costs more than the whole setup with the 12' cord. I told my wife that they didn't want to sell many of those. Who would pay that much for a few more feet of cable?

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Thanks, I got one on order.
I share a driveway apron with a neighbor, and then our drives split. Once my drive splits from the neighbor, it splits again on my side, one to my garage, one to my barn. I want to put the sensor where the neighbors don't trip it, but I can catch both of my drives. I smell some backhoe work coming up.

 

[Willl]

Mjncad, I've got an Chamberlain that's about a year old that just didn't work for me.
Been sitting in the junk drawer past 6 months. If your interested, cover shipping and it's yours.

 

[mjncad]

Thanks for the offer Will; but if it didn't work for you, it probably won't work for me.

 

[NSBound]

I have the Chamberlain wireless model and it works great. I have 2 transmitters, one on the driveway and one on a path down to the river. Deer do set it off, but that's OK, I use it to get up and chase them out of my garden when they wander up from the river end. They're both about 200-300 feet away from the house, in opposite directions. I have to replace batteries about twice a year.

 

[mjncad]

Nice avatar NSBound!

 

[NSBound]

Nice avatar NSBound!

:licking:

 

[buckeyefarmer]

my mighty mule came today, didn't realize the sensor was so small, looks like a shovel job instead of the backhoe. I might even lay it in a flower bed and cover with mulch.