Soon after I leased my first office space at a local industrial compound, the in-house cleaning staff had an accident. One of the janitors which attended to that floor slipped on a wet tile and bumped my door clean off of its rusty hinges.

The moment I phoned my landlord, he informed me that it would take 2 weeks to repair the door. Since my office at that time was pretty much open to anyone, I made a decision to purchase a motion alert alarm to keep intruders away.

I purchased a small, passive infrared alarm which was meant to monitor entryways and placed it facing the hole where my door used to be. My plan was to make use of it to alert the after-hours security guards to any kind of possible trespassers.

The motion-detecting alarm would sound whenever another person walks by it. And it could even be set up to play a basic two-tone entry chime for when you’re at the office and don’t want the alarming to go off and contact the guards.

It was battery-powered, so that meant I could install it in any convenient place around my office doorway. I wouldn’t have worry about getting landlord approval to drill and also run wires through the walls.

In the weeks that I had this security alarm, I activated the two-tone chime while I was in the office so that I would know anytime someone wanted to see me. I then changed it to alarm mode just before I left for the day.

During this time, the security guards actually caught some individuals trying to sneak into my office in the after-hours. These were mainly homeless bums off the street that were looking to steal whatever was not nailed down to sell it off for some quick money.

It seems silly to have to go 2 weeks without a door however I was able to improvise a clever solution with a motion alert alarm. Instead of throwing the thing away, I plan on keeping it and using it later on as part of a complete security system.