27/10-10   -   Press releases

Television Simulator Baffles Burglars

Ever notice the flickering glow shining from your neighbor´s windows when they are watching television? Burglars use this as a cue that a home is occupied, so they know to move on to another target. But from now on, many would-be thieves are going to be misled by a new burglar deterrent device, FakeTV™. A FakeTV simulates the light output of a television, making it look like someone is home watching TV. A built-in computer controls super-bright LEDs to produce light of varying intensity and color that lights up a room just like a real television does. The light effects of real television programming - scene changes, camera pans, fades, flicks, swells, on-screen motion, and more - are all faithfully simulated by a FakeTV.

FakeTV was conceived by author and inventor Blaine Readler. “My wife and I were going out for the evening. I decided to leave the TV on so that it looked like somebody was still at home. I commented that it was a shame to waste all that electricity, when the burglars couldn´t even see the picture itself, just the reflection off the wall. That evening, my mind kept coming back to this. There had to be a cheap way to simulate a television as seen from outside."

Readler partnered with Hydreon Corporation to make his idea a reality. They studied that flickering glow in detail, gathering much data with sophisticated instruments about the exact nature of the intensity and color variations emanating from a real television. News programs, for example, are far more static than dramas, and commercials more dynamic. A sequence of outdoor water scenes may have a bluish cast, a game show set might be reddish, while an animated sequence might explode with color. The result: test subjects were unable to tell the difference between the prototype television simulator and the real thing.

For a would-be burglar, an operating television is always an unwelcome sight. Most burglars would rather move on to a house that appears to be vacant. Unlike light from a lamp on a timer, the light from FakeTV is constantly changing. It gives the impression of life. FakeTV is available in the UK for about 30£. FakeTV is a trademark of Hydreon Corporation.