Sensors

Last modified: Friday February 07, 2025.

Using sensors without cameras

Alta Protect uses your cameras to detect potential security incidents. However, this might not always be possible.

Unsurveilled areas

Some areas of your sites, such as work areas and restrooms, might not be suitable for security cameras.

• These areas require other sensors, such as motion detectors or contact sensors.
• Add these additional sensors as triggers for your alarm zones. See Add triggers to a zone.

Sensor-only alarm risks

An important feature of Protect is the use of cameras to reduce false alarms.

• If you use the Alta Protect monitoring service and enable automated dispatches, a sensor alarm without associated camera footage automatically requests a dispatch. See Triggered alarm actions.
• Sensor-only alarms have the same false alarm potential as conventional intrusion systems.

Using sensors with cameras

If you use other sensors, such as motion detectors or magnetic contacts, you can associate them with cameras when you add them to Protect. See Alta Video Generic sensor integration.

• Position associated cameras facing the sensor.
• Do not associate sensors with cameras that cannot see the sensor.
  • If you use the Alta Protect monitoring service, Protect automatically sends video from an associated camera when the sensor triggers an alarm event.
  • Remote operators might report a valid alarm as false if an associated recording does not show what a sensor detected.