Throughout the almost two years since the Visonic detectors were installed outside the pigeon cages, the entire PowerMaxPro supervised system has remained false-alarm free. And, the high value pigeons remain protected – with the pigeon breeder and installer both confident they will continue to be so.
Valuable birds present security challenge
Top pigeons are quite valuable and breeders are keen to keep their birds safe from competitors and others who might try to steal them. However, because pigeons are constantly flying around, it takes a special kind of motion detector to provide reliable detection while still guarding against false alarm.
Peiter-Jelle Cuijpers, from Becu Security in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, believed that Visonic’s TOWER-20AM MCW outdoor detector was up to the challenge, so he put his money behind it.
Pieter-Jelle Cuijpers tells the story:
“In September 2010, I installed a PowerMaxPro control panel with four TOWER-20AM MCW outdoor detectors to protect the expensive pigeons kept by a well-known pigeon breeder. He was due to get a big, high-profile order of pigeons from Japan, so he was afraid that someone would try to steal his pigeons. At the same time though, he was concerned that installing motion detectors would just result in a lot of false alarms. So, I promised the pigeon keeper that if he had any false alarms I would uninstall the complete system for free, and return his full purchase price.”
Two of the detectors were placed close to the doors of the cages, about 20cm from where the birds are flying around in the cages, and the other two detectors were installed about 15m from the cages. The good news is that no-one has yet attempted to steal the keeper’s pigeons. But it’s even better news that with the TOWER-20AM MCW detectors, false alarms are not an issue at all. The only time the alarm has gone off is when there was a big storm and a large fence fell down just in front of one of the detectors. The pigeon breeder did not count that as a false alarm, and so the system remains in place. Both Pieter-Jelle Cuijpers and his customer remain confident that should there be an alarm event, it will be the real thing. The no-false-alarm promise has been borne out.
