Animal tolerance for outdoor detection

28 May 2020

For any outdoor intrusion protection system, wildlife and domestic pets moving in the secure area can cause a headache. Our tech team gives you some advice on how such headaches can be avoided with careful planning.

We explore how to accommodate pets or wild animals when protecting the external perimeters and grounds of residential and commercial properties.

What type of animals are around?

First, it is important to understand what type of animals are likely to be present, and this will depend on where you are based, and whether the site is in a city or the countryside. They might be relatively small animals like a cat or a pigeon, or they might be larger animals such as a dog or badger, or a larger bird such as a seagull or pheasant.

Different technologies will be better suited to different type or size of animals.

System design

If there is any area with a concentration of animals, it is recommended to isolate this zone from the rest of the intrusion detection system and treat it separately to avoid risks of nuisance alarms. As with all intrusion detection systems it is also important to position the sensors in such a way that they don’t overspill onto an area with more animals; for instance, if the property is located along a field or woods.

Animal tolerance using outdoor PIRs

Creating a pet alley

Our newly-launched QXI sensor can be mounted between 0.8 and 1.2 m high in a pet alley mode to create a low-level ‘corridor’ through which an animal can move freely without triggering the alarm.

Using two layers of detection

Our OPTEX low-mount sensor series, being the volumetric sensors such as the VXI, VXS, WXI and WXS or the curtain sensors such as the FTN and BXS are using two layers of detection beams. An alarm will be only generated if presence and movement are detected across both the lower and upper beams. This dual layered detection method will accommodate larger dogs, foxes etc providing very reliable outdoor detection.

High mount QXI and HX series provide as well two layers of detection making them tolerant to small animals such as a cat, large bird, or small dog.

Optex high mount sensors animal tolerance

Animal tolerance using infrared beams

Photo beams installed to protect driveways, gates, open perimeters etc are usually mounted at human waist height. Common four-legged animals will therefore not be detected. When installed on the top of a wall or fence, stationary birds (pigeons, seagull etc), cats, squirrels etc could break the beams and trigger nuisance alarms. Our Quad infrared beams range, the SL series, can solve this issue as both the lower and upper two beams need to be blocked to generate an alarm.

LiDAR detection

Our Laser sensor or LiDAR has the ability to define the size of the target so the system can be set to ignore any animal-sized moving object and only trigger for larger objects.