Vigil / Guides

Guides

Plain-English, no-hype explainers on home security and room sensing: how the technology actually works, where it honestly falls short, and how to secure your own place — written by the team behind Vigil, the security and sensing hub that runs on your Mac.

• Camera-free security

  Home Security Without Cameras: How Presence Sensing Works

  Cameras aren't the only way to know whether someone is in your home. How PIR, acoustic sonar, WiFi sensing, and radar answer the question — and their honest limits.

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• The technology

  How Room Sensing Works: WiFi and Acoustic Sensing Explained

  Channel-state information, inaudible sonar, the Doppler effect, and breathing detection — the physics behind room sensing, and the privacy model that comes with it.

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• Monitoring models

  Self-Monitored vs. Professionally Monitored Home Security

  Who finds out when a sensor fires at 2 a.m.? Contracts, false alarms, failure modes, and privacy — a clear-eyed comparison of the two monitoring models.

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• Privacy & architecture

  Keeping Smart-Home Data on Your Own Hardware

  Your smart home writes a diary of when you're home, asleep, and away. Why routing it through a vendor cloud changes everything — and what no-cloud looks like in practice.

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• Hands-on audit

  The Practical Home Security Checklist for Apartments and Houses

  A room-by-room audit you can run in an hour: doors, windows, lighting, routines, network hygiene, and alerts. Cheap fixes first, renter-safe throughout.

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