My wife works for a retirement residence with about 150 clients.
She runs the activities department there. Movies are a popular activity and as such, some rather expensive equipment has been purchased and installed (receiver, projection, huge screen, sound etc…All together, about 6k worth of gear.
Sometime in the last few nights, someone has attempted to remove this equipment, so far without success.
As a result, a security camera has been installed in the smoke detector, which will (hopefully) record all activity in the audio-visual room.
So far so good, but I feel that this is “almost” a waste of time and money, since the equipment can still disappear and result in a suspension of what is a popular activity for the paying customers.
My question for you, my learned colleagues, is; What measures would you recommend in order to discourage a thief from stealing this equipment?
It’s nice to have a video tape of an employee making off with company assets, and obviously dismissal of said employee is not a problem, but recovering the stolen items (not likely) or making a claim with the insurance company can (and has) taken up to a year to happen.
Does anyone have experience with the cable systems available for PC’s wherein a steel cable is attached to the equipment with a high-end adhesive and the other end affixed to a desk? Does this work? Will it at least slow down the removal, or maybe even discourage the thief from proceeding?
In one university lab I worked in, we used cables to secure everything of value because the building was fairly insecure. Our shop used both epoxies and cages for gear, and both worked fine. For epoxy, they would take a large flat plate of aluminum (maybe 6" square, depending on where it was to be affixed) with a tab with a hole for the cable. The cable would be connected to a similar plate on a very large piece of furniture or wall. For gear on mobile carts, the gear was secured to the cart and the cart was then secured to a support post or ring in the wall using kryptonite bike locks or another cable. The cables were fairly hefty aircraft cable. In most cases they were permanently attached (which required them to be cut when the gear was replaced) but some were padlocked in place so gear could be checked out. You could cut through them if you needed to (especially since these labs were also full of tools) but they were substantial enough to make it require committed effort.
For computer gear, it was important to choose an appropriate place for the epoxied plate. If it’s secured to the case, someone can easily pop the case off and take the guts of the computer. In these cases they would epoxy to the base or build custom cages to enclose the entire box, and then secure the cage with a cable.
I think you could do the same thing without a lot of machining skill. You can easily find appropriate plate materials just by browsing your hardware store. You can buy a lot of different steel plates for use in joining building materials, and it should be simple to find ones large enough to provide a strong bond with the epoxy and have a hole that is either bent up at an angle to the main plate or in a position where it can overlap the edge of your gear’s box so the cable can be attached. You can get crimpers which allow you to make loops in the ends of aircraft cable, so you can make your own or just buy lengths with loops at each end. If you buy ready-made cables, you can use padlocks to join them to the holes in the plates.
All of these measures seemed a bit paranoid and inconvenient when I arrived, but when you get to the last few weeks of data-taking on your dissertation research, you want to baby-sit your gear with guard dogs and shotguns, so the cables and cages seemed inadequate. I think they’d be a quick and easy solution to your problem.
Is this a location that has people moving around a lot late at night? If not, perhaps one of the motion alarms might work. You set them down on top of the equipment, and when something is moved, a loud alarm sounds. Sure it can be turned off, but if you can affix it to the stuff in such a way that it’s not obviouse, it might scare the person enough so they figure that it’s just not worth it.
Thanks for the suggestions! The epoxy/aluminum plate/cable idea makes perfect sense is simple and inexpensive to implement and will surely discourage all but the most determined and well-equipped thieves.
My next hurdle will be convincing the owners that preventing the removal of their equipment is more imprtant than identifying the potential thief.