If you had to rig up your own home security on a tight budget, what would you do?

As for motion lights indoors, I tried them in my hallway—ended up with way too many accidental triggers from the cat.

That’s classic. I had the same issue, except it was my dog setting off the lights at 2am and waking up half the house. Eventually, I swapped out the standard sensors for ones with adjustable sensitivity and set them higher up on the wall—seemed to cut down on pet triggers a lot. For doors and windows, I’m with you on the screw-in magnetic sensors. Once they’re in, you can basically forget about them... unlike those stick-ons that peel off in a humid summer.