On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:58:23 -0400, aemeijers
wrote:
.....

Not to mention dealing with your ****ed-off neighbors who had to listen
to the alarm until it reset itself, if it gets tripped when you aren't home.

I found out years into it that whenever someone rang my doorbell when
I wasn't home, usually the mailman, it set off my burglar alarm. Most
people weren't home and no one complained. It just came up in
conversation.

I foudn a nicer doorbell on sale for 60% off, so I bought it and put
the other one in the basement. Then it turned out I needed a bigger
doorbell transformer to run both, and when I got the bigger one it
rang the main floor bell louder than the previous bell had rung, which
set off the glass/wood breakage detector, and the alarm.

Didn't want to make the two detectors less sensitive, so I put a
resistor in the power supply to the main floor bell. Used a
potentiometer until I got a good value, measured the value of the pot
at that point, and replaced it with a fixed resistor.