Life Security guide

What it does

Think of the orb as a security guard standing in your region. Every few seconds it looks at everyone in the region and asks two questions:

1. Is this person inside one of my areas? (The places you told it to protect.) If not, it leaves them alone.
2. May they be here? (Are they on your lists, and do they follow your rules?) If yes, it leaves them alone.

Anyone inside an area who may not be there gets a message in chat ("Please leave within 20 seconds"). If they're still there when the time is up, the orb ejects them or sends them home, whichever you chose.

The orb makes every decision by itself, inside Second Life. Our website is where you set it up comfortably, see your visitors and manage it from anywhere, but your land stays protected even if the website is down.

What's in the box

Words you'll see

Quick start

About ten minutes, from the box to a protected home.

1. Rez the orb on your land. Somewhere central is best, but it sees the whole region wherever it stands.
2. Connect it to the website. Touch the orb and choose Website. A link opens: follow it to sign in, or to make your account if you don't have one (it's the same account as LifeRental System). From now on you can manage the orb on the website too.
3. Add an area. Touch the orb › Areas › Add. For a first try, stand on your land and choose This parcel, then type a name such as Home. (All the kinds of area are explained in Areas.)
4. Add your friends. Touch the orb › Access › Guests › Add nearby (someone near you) or Add by name (type their username, for example jane.doe). You, the owner, are always welcome.
5. Choose your rules. On the website (your orb's page) or the orb's Options. The most common choice for a private home: switch on Disallow by default, so only people on your lists may stay. Leave the rest as they are for now.
6. Arm it. Touch the orb › Arm (or Arm on the website). Its face turns green.
7. Test it with a friend who isn't on your lists, or an alt: they should get a warning in chat when they step onto your parcel, and be ejected after 20 seconds.
8. Group land? If your parcel belongs to a group, the orb can warn but not eject until you set up an Enforcer on it. Do that next.

Areas

The orb only protects its areas, so add at least one. An orb can have up to 20, and each has a name of your choice (unique on that orb). Add them in Second Life: touch the orb › Areas › Add. Remove them there (Areas › Remove) or on the website.

Seeing and changing an area later

• On the website: your orb's page shows its region's Second Life map with every area drawn on it, in its own colour, and the orb as a dot. Click an area on the map to jump to it in the list, where you'll see its kind and heights (for example box · 20 m to 40 m) and its rules. A parcel area is listed but not drawn (the map doesn't know its exact edges).
• Who's in each area now: with Visitor tracking on, each area on the map shows how many people are in it, and its hover card lists them (anyone warned is marked). It updates by itself every half minute while the page is open.
• On the website, Edit name and height: under an area, change its name and how high it goes (from and to, in metres above sea level; a range: its distance). Renaming keeps its rules. To move its outline, use Edit in Second Life (below).
• In Second Life, Show: touch the orb › Areas › Show and pick an area. Markers fly to its corners and glowing lines join them, so you see exactly where it is (a range shows a ring). They go by themselves after 5 minutes, or touch one.
• In Second Life, Edit: touch the orb › Areas › Edit and pick an area. Its markers fly to its corners: drag them to the new spots (a shape can Add corner), then touch one (and give the height for a turned box or shape). It keeps its name and its rules; only its place changes. A range just asks for its new distance. A region or parcel area has nothing to edit.

When areas overlap

You can put a small area inside a big one, for example a club inside your region. Where they overlap, the most specific one counts:

Shape, box or turned box › Range › Parcel › Region. Between two of the same kind, the smaller one wins.

Example: a Region area and a Club box inside it. Standing in the club, the club's rules apply; anywhere else in the region, the region's do. The order you added them in doesn't matter.

Keeping neighbours safe

The orb can only remove people from land you control (see Your land), so it can never eject anyone from a neighbour's parcel. On a region you share, the option Only on the orb's parcel also makes it ignore everyone outside its own parcel, even inside a range.

An area's own rules

Normally every area follows the orb's options. On the website you can give any area its own rules, for example a club that's 18-days-and-up with no flying, while the rest of the region is open to all.

1. Open your orb's page on the website (Life Security, or Security in your LifeRental menu).
2. In Areas, under the area, click Rules: the orb's.
3. Each option shows The orb's (…), with the orb's own setting in brackets. Change only what should be different in this area: pick On or Off, or type a number. Leave the rest as they are.
4. Click Save. The link now says, for example, Rules: 2 of its own, and the orb uses them within seconds.

An area can set: who may be there (Disallow by default, Group members are guests), the rules (Minimum account age, Most scripts worn, Most render weight, No-fly zone) and what happens (Warning time, Eject, Teleport home, Add to the parcel ban list, Return their objects).

The same everywhere, whatever the area: the orb's mode (armed, lockdown) and its access lists. Your guests are welcome in every area, and banned people are banned from all of them.

To undo, set everything back to The orb's (empty boxes) and save. Rules can only be changed on the website, and they're deleted with their area.

Arming and lockdown

The orb has three modes. Change them by touching the orb, on the website, or (for tenants) on their tenant page.

Banned people are always removed at once while the orb is armed, without a warning.

Arrival question: when someone who may not stay comes into an area (they aren't on a list and Disallow by default is on, or they break one of its rules: account age, scripts, render weight, flying, bots), every admin and subadmin in the region gets a pop-up (subadmins unless Tell subadmins is off; what a subadmin adds is theirs). Allow lets them stay in that area for now; Temporary asks how long (5 minutes to 2 days, or Custom: any number of hours) and makes them a temporary guest for that long: they can come and go until it's up, then they're taken off the list; Guest adds them to the guest list; Eject removes them, and Eject + Ban removes and bans them. If they go into another area where they may not stay, you're asked again. Questions come one at a time, in the order people arrived.

Who may stay

Adding people in Second Life: touch the orb › Access › pick the list › Add nearby (choose from people in the region) or Add by name (type their username, like jane.doe, not their display name). Remove and List are on the same menu.

On the website: your orb's page has the same lists: type a username and choose the list, or click Remove next to someone.

The lists live inside the orb (up to 500 people) and the website keeps a copy; a change made in either place reaches the other within seconds.

Options

Set them on the website (your orb's page) or by touching the orb › Options (choose one to switch it on or off).

Who may stay

Rules

What happens

The orb

Your land and the Enforcer

Second Life has a rule: an object can only eject, ban or send someone home on land its owner controls. So whether the orb can act depends on who owns the parcel the visitor is standing on.

So you need one Enforcer per parcel that needs it: never one per region and never one per area. One Enforcer works for all of your orbs on its parcel. Joining parcels into one means fewer Enforcers.

Setting up an Enforcer on your own land

1. Rez the Enforcer anywhere on the parcel (you can hide it later).
2. Touch it. If you want Return their objects, accept the permission it asks for.
3. Its floating text should say Active.

Setting up an Enforcer on group land

1. Put on the land's group tag (you need a group role that's allowed to deed objects).
2. Rez the Enforcer on the parcel.
3. Edit it › General tab › tick Share with group › click Deed, and confirm.
4. Its floating text should now say Active. It keeps working for your orbs (the person who deeded it).
5. For Return their objects, a group owner touches it and accepts the permission.

Its look

Its owner can touch it for a menu of switches: Dark look / Light look, Hide / Show (fully transparent; touch where it is to bring the menu back), and Hide text / Show text. If it ever can't work (wrong land, not deeded), it says NOT ACTIVE in red, even with its text hidden, so you'll notice.

How many orbs do I need?

Usually one per region: one orb sees the whole region and can protect every parcel you control in it, with up to 20 areas, each with its own rules if you like.

Use more than one when:

• You have land in another region: an orb never sees past its own region.
• Different people should control security in different places: the mode and the access lists belong to the whole orb. For example, each tenant arming their own rental needs their own orb (see With LifeRental rentals).
• You need more than 20 areas.

Other people's land in the same region isn't covered by your orb at all: each land owner needs their own orb for their own parcels.

The website

Manage your orbs at security.lifetech.systems. If you use LifeRental System too, the same pages are in your LifeRental dashboard: Security in the side menu (it appears once you have an orb). It's one account and one set of settings: change it in either place.

• Your orbs: where each one is, its mode, and whether it's online.
• An orb's page: arm, disarm and lockdown; options; a map of its region with its areas drawn on it, and each area's rules; access lists; the rental it's linked to; delete it.
• Visitors: who's in its areas now and who came before (with tracking on).

Changes reach the orb within seconds. Changes made at the orb show on the website within seconds too. If the orb was offline, everything catches up as soon as it's back.

With LifeRental rentals

If you rent out land with LifeRental System, you can give each tenant control of security for their rental.

1. Rez an orb for the rental and add an area that covers it (for example This parcel, or a box around the house).
2. On the orb's website page, choose the unit under Rental unit and save.

From then on, the orb follows the rental by itself:

• Your staff (managers and admins) are its admins.
• The tenant and their extra tenants (added through the rental's own sub-tenant system) are subadmins. Nobody can make subadmins any other way, so a tenant controls exactly who shares their rental.
• Tenants can arm, disarm and lock down, and add guests, temporary guests and bans: by touching the orb, or from their tenant page (My Rentals › their orb), where they also see who's in their areas.
• When the rental ends or changes hands, the old tenant, their extra tenants and everyone they added are removed automatically. People you added yourself stay.

Visitor tracking

Switch on Visitor tracking to see on the website who's in your areas right now and who came before: when they came, how long they stayed, whether they'd been before, and whether they were warned, sent home, ejected or banned. With LifeRental you also see who rents from you or has paid you. Tracking works on any land, even a shop you rent, because it only watches.

Notifications

The orb can tell people when someone is warned, ejected, sent home or banned. Choose who hears (admins, subadmins, guests) and how, under How told:

• Chat: a message in the region, only to people who are there.
• IM: instant messages, so they reach people anywhere (the orb sends them, which takes a moment each).
• Bot: IMs from your LifeBots bot: connect LifeBots and choose the bot on the Bots page (in the menu). Without a bot, the orb sends the IMs itself.

Someone the orb can't remove (for example on land it has no rights on) is reported once per visit, not again and again.

Something's not working

It warns people but doesn't remove them

1. Is the orb armed (green face)?
2. Is Eject or Teleport home on? (Teleport home only works for people with a home location.)
3. Whose land are they standing on? On group land there must be an Enforcer on that very parcel, deeded to the group, saying Active. On someone else's land the orb can only warn.
4. Estate managers and the land owner can't be ejected by anyone; that's Second Life's rule.

It ignores someone it shouldn't

1. Are they inside one of the orb's areas? Outside every area, nobody is checked.
2. Is Disallow by default on? Without it, anyone not banned and not breaking a rule may stay.
3. Are they on a list (guest, subadmin), or wearing the orb's group tag with a group option on?
4. Is Only on the orb's parcel on, while they're on a different parcel?

It removes someone who should be welcome

1. Are they on a list? Usernames, not display names.
2. Group members must be wearing the group tag.
3. Does the area they're in have its own rules (account age, no-fly…)? Check Rules under that area on the website.

It warns someone but never removes them

1. Is Eject or Teleport home on (for the orb, or for that area)? With neither, the orb only warns.
2. Are they on land the orb's owner doesn't own (a tenant's or a group's parcel)? Second Life only lets the land's owner remove people, so put a Life Security Enforcer on that parcel. The orb tells you once a visit when it couldn't remove someone.
3. To let them stay, add them as a guest.

The website and the orb don't agree

1. Is the orb online? (Its row on the website says so.) Changes wait until it's back.
2. Give it a few seconds, then reload the page.

After updating the orb's scripts, its settings are gone

If the orb once ran older, unfinished copies of its scripts, it starts fresh with the new ones. Add its areas and options again; it registers as a new orb on the website.

Updating your orbs

When a new version comes out, the Life Security Updater updates every orb and Enforcer of yours in a region in one go. Your orbs keep all their settings, areas, lists and their website link.

1. Rez the Updater in the region with your orbs.
2. Touch it. It finds your orbs and Enforcers there and says how many need updating.
3. Choose Update outdated (or Update all). It updates them one at a time, about 15 seconds each, with an orange beam to the one it's working on, then checks they all run the new version.
4. Repeat in each region where you have orbs.

Questions