For those of you wondering "where am I supposed to run these wires???" the only
advice I have is to make use of that wonderful suspended ceiling. "Well what
if I don't have a suspended ceiling?" Hmm... Be creative! Corners are great
for wires... :).
Once your system is set up, you have to figure out how to make it useful. Out-
of-the-box it only mails root. Obviously that's not very useful, but it's the
only thing that all (Unix...) boxes have in common. However, if your LAN or
WAN is connected to the Internet, and you have a pager or cell phone that
receives e-mail, then you can make good use of this! You can be notified
within seconds if your place is burning down or being broken into. And it
works as a silent alarm, so you may have a chance of catching someone in the
act (I do not suggest that you take this duty upon yourself, make sure you call
the proper authorities. I am not responsible for any vigilante created by the
use of my software... :) )! The silent alarm part is, of course (cough, cough),
an intended feature, it is NOT a bug.
One neat thing that I will experiment with in the future is an electronic lock.
We have one of these locking an office down the hall, and it works off a remote.
If a wire could be run to it in the right place or the remote modified (using
a transistor mounted where the remote button is supposed to be) they it could
be integrated into the system! For the time being, I don't have any output
triggers in my software, but if you put it easily in the intruderalert script!
Of course, if you're talented enough to do that, they by all means, go ahead
and modify the source and get to it! Just do the community a favor and let
everyone know how you did it! Or send it to me, and I'll post it...
One final note on the program itself. It has to be somehow started and stopped.
Now, if you start the program and then leave the office, if the door you leave
by has a door magnet, or the lobby has a motion sensor, then you're out of
luck, because you'll get picked up immediately. So it'd probably make sense to
run the program with a sleep routine before it (in Unix: 'sleep 360'). Since
I run the computers here and created the timecard system, I've got it hooked
up so that after all staff have clocked off a 5 minute timer routine starts.
If no one logs in during that 5 minute period, then the alarm is set. Now
I've also got my intruderalert program modified so that it waits 3 minutes
before sending out e-mail to see if anyone logs in! The system runs pretty
much unattended. Of course, you could do nearly anything, including putting
a numeric keypad at the entrances, if you are so inclined! Or you could just
walk in an turn the program off. You'd still get e-mail... but who cares?
You're already there... :) just make sure your boss doesn't get the e-mail!