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 for your own computer.
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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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Put the guides into practice
Vigil turns the Mac you already own into a private home-security and room-sensing hub — presence sensing without cameras, LAN device control, no vendor cloud.
Mac and Windows access options. $25/month after the trial; cancel before it ends to avoid renewal. Features depend on platform and connected hardware.
Try Vigil — 7 days free