Solar alarm tower
for sites with no power and no internet.

What is a solar alarm tower?

A self-contained intrusion alarm on a steel tower that needs no mains power and no site internet. Rivas Technology Group builds it on the Sun Guardian SG-AGT001 tower and fits it with Ajax equipment: a Hub 2 control panel on cellular, four outdoor detectors that photograph what they see, and two outdoor sirens. It detects an intruder, takes a photo of the alarm, sounds the sirens and reports to the Ajax app.

It is an alarm tower, not a camera tower. It does not record video and it does not stream live video. What it gives you is the thing that decides whether you get out of bed. Every alarm carries a photo of what set it off, so a person in the yard and a branch in the wind do not look the same on your phone. If the site needs recorded video, the solar surveillance trailer page explains what camera trailers are and how the two work together.

What is on the tower?

The equipment is fixed, and the tower is pre-drilled for it.

Ground anchors or a ballast kit are an optional add-on.

What does the tower itself give you?

Power and a place to put the equipment, built for ground that has neither. The SG-AGT001 is galvanized steel, powder coated, made from 1.2 mm cold-rolled steel that is laser cut and welded. It stands 57.5 inches high on a 21.6 by 17.7 inch footprint and weighs 49.5 kg, about 109 lb, with the battery in it.

A 25 W monocrystalline solar panel feeds a 12 V 80 Ah gel solar battery through a 10 A charge controller. The base is raised to keep the equipment clear of standing water, and there is an external charging port for the days when the sun has not done enough. The mounting points for the Ajax devices are pre-drilled, so the tower and the alarm are one unit rather than a bracket exercise on site.

How much ground can one tower cover?

More than the tower itself, because the tower is a hub rather than a fence. The Ajax Hub 2 inside it talks to detectors over Jeweller, Ajax's own radio, so a detector does not have to be bolted to the tower. It has to be within radio range of it.

Ajax specifies up to 2,000 m of Jeweller range in open space for the Hub 2, and around 1,700 m for the detectors themselves1. Open space is a laboratory figure and a job site is the opposite of one: stacked containers, steel frames, vehicles, wet vegetation and metal fencing all cut it down. So the signal gets tested at the exact spot a detector is going, not estimated from a map. Where a far corner will not hold a link, a ReX 2 range extender bridges it, and the hub supports up to five of them.

One hub carries up to 100 devices, up to 10 sirens and up to 9 security groups1. Groups matter on a live site: the laydown yard can be armed while the trailer office is not.

What can go on the rest of the site?

Whichever outdoor detector suits the shape of the thing you are protecting.

Battery life runs to about three years on the photo detectors and up to about five on MotionProtect Outdoor, so a detector placed in March is still working when the job finishes. The HighMount photo detector can also take 12 to 24 V if a site has power to give it, keeping its batteries as backup.

Where can those detectors go?

On anything rigid. A fence post, a steel pole, a container wall, a site hut, a light standard. What matters is that the mount does not move, because a detector that moves takes its detection zone with it.

Not on trees. Ajax advises against it, and the reason is practical rather than fussy: wind moves a tree, a moving detector re-aims itself, and the thing it was covering at noon is not what it covers at midnight. A tree also grows into its own field of view. If a site genuinely has nothing else, we drive a post.

Container walls are a good physical mount and a poor radio one, because the steel sits between the detector and the hub. That is a signal test at the real spot, and a range extender if it fails, rather than a guess that goes wrong in month three.

Where does it work?

Ground that is worth protecting and has no power to protect it with. Construction sites, where materials and equipment sit exposed for months and the power moves with the phases. Equipment and material yards. Container rows. Vacant properties between tenants. Farms and agricultural land. Storage areas and event spaces. The off-grid site security page walks through each of these sites.

Each detector covers roughly 3 to 15 m, about 10 to 50 ft, so the tower suits yards and defined areas rather than open acreage. A larger lot or a long fence line needs more towers or more detectors. That is what the site assessment is for, and it is a question of counts rather than a question of whether it works.

What happens once it is on site?

Every tower comes with the service that makes it work. That is the cellular connection, the Ajax app on your phone, alerts to everyone you name with a photo attached, and the system health watched by us. If the hub drops off cellular, a detector's battery dies or the panel stops charging, we see it and tell you. On an unattended site that is the difference between a system that is protecting you and one that quietly stopped weeks ago. An annual panel clean, battery test and health report is included.

What that service does not include is a person. The sirens sound and your phone rings, and if nobody answers at 3 a.m. then nothing further happens. Verified monitoring is the option that changes it: a central station reviews the photo from the alarm and dispatches on what they see. It is quoted with the tower rather than listed here, because the right answer depends on the site, the hours it sits empty and what is standing on it.

What comes after the tower?

A permanent system for the finished building, designed by the same people. A contractor who runs a tower through the build hands the site to an owner who needs cameras on the doors and lot, access control on the entries, and a monitored alarm. The cabling comes from commercial infrastructure, with the rest of the commercial hub behind it.

Clyde's Southern Wood Fired BBQ in Tacoma shows what cameras placed on the real risk areas did to a run of theft losses. South Sound Law Group and Washington Pottery Company show the networks a permanent system rides on. Our commercial AV consulting puts all of it on the drawings before the GC bids.

Where do we work?

From 415 Railroad Ave S, Kent, WA 98032, about 30 minutes from most South Sound sites. Those sites include Kent, Renton, Tukwila, Federal Way, Auburn, Covington, Maple Valley, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake, Tehaleh, University Place and Gig Harbor. The Olympic Peninsula and sites farther afield are by appointment and quote.