A glass break detector or glass break sensor is a particular type of detector that detects when glass is broken. They can be an important additional security measure, working alongside motion sensors, window sensors, and door sensors.
Most glass break sensors use a microphone (with a suitably wide frequency response) to recognise the frequencies generated when glass is broken. Most glass break sensors are omni-directional and have a working radius of several meters, so placing one in the middle of a room with multiple windows, will usually be sufficient to detect shattering glass in the room.
Most glass break detectors on the market are wireless and designed to be installed as part of a complete alarm system. This also means that they have batteries. Our preferred approach is to use wired, 'dumb' sensors that we can directly interface to our contextual smart home.
Glass break detectors would typically be installed in rooms to protect the perimeter of a property, with one in each room with external facing glass. They don't need to be visible and can be mounted out of sight, for example under kitchen wall-mounted cupboards. Whave one in our conservatory and near our back door and front door (both have glass panels).
The Texecom AEC-0001 Impaq is a wired glass break detector that uses acoustic detection methods and is powered by a (9V to 16V dc power supply). It is suitable for plate, tempered, laminated and wired glass types and has adjustable sensitivity and advanced signal processing algorithms.
We would interface wired 12V dc sensors like the Texecom AEC-0001 Impaq glass break detector to our contextual smart home using 4-core alarm cable to our 8-channel optically-isolated input board, which also provides the required 12V power. This would be connected to an Arduino processor which uses our unified communications protocol to securely send events to our Home Control System, updating it with changes of state.
Glass break detectors are not just considered security sensors and are also consider to be a safety sensor. This means our smart home's alarm will trigger regardless of whether the security alarm is armed or not. This will also result in a whole home voice announcement and high priority notifications.
We use common models for all the sensors connected to our Home Control System but, we also model glass break detectors with their own object type called 'Glass'. This means that any added sensor inherits all of the capabilities supported by our models and all of the common capabilities of our smart home. Essentially, every sensor connected becomes instantly very smart.
All objects of type 'Glass' also model a secondary zone and trigger occupancy in both the primary and this secondary zone. This means that breaking a window in our lounge (for example) would instantly mark the 'Lounge' zone and the 'Drive' zone as occupied.
