Anywhere. On everything.
Invisible in plain sight.

No. Digital Tripwire uses a residue-free 3M-family adhesive designed for premium surfaces (fine wood, leather, painted metal, painted drywall, fabric). It holds for years and lifts cleanly with no residue and no finish damage. On surfaces where you want to be extra careful (museum-quality art, museum-conservation contexts, antique wood), we ship with a conservation-grade adhesive option that leaves nothing behind and passes standard conservation review. If you're unsure about a specific surface, ask before you place.

First: you usually don't need it. Best practice is to place the node inside the object, out of sight, where no color match is required. For the rare cases where interior placement isn't possible, every Digital Tripwire node ships with a printed sheet of 200+ color-swatch stickers covering common surfaces (fabric, leather, wood, metal, painted plastic, canvas). Pick the sticker that matches the surface, peel it, place it over the node's top face, then place the node on the surface. The sticker is what makes the color match happen. One SKU on the node hardware, a sheet of 200+ finishes on the sticker layer, applied by you in a couple of seconds. Custom sticker printing is available for luxury interiors, gallery-quality art installations, and specialty vehicles.

The app shows every node's status, battery level, and last check-in in real time. You can run a test-ping any time to verify a node is live. Health notifications alert you before batteries need attention or if a node stops reporting. The invisibility is a design choice for how the node looks to others. It's fully visible in your app.

Yes. The adhesive is designed to lift cleanly and re-apply cleanly. Most people place a node once and forget about it, but if you sell the item, move houses, or reorganize, the node comes off in a few seconds with no damage and re-adheres in seconds on the next surface. If the new surface is a different color, peel a different sticker from the sheet and swap it out. The app auto-detects when a node has been relocated and updates its location context.

No. There's no logo, no visible model number, no indicator light in normal operation, and no external port. At close inspection it looks like a small piece of trim, a design element, or a manufacturer's badge that belongs on the surface. Even people specifically looking for security devices typically miss them. If someone does identify it, that's actually fine (the forensic record is captured regardless), but the color match keeps the device out of the pattern-match a would-be bad actor scans for.

The placement philosophy above answers this: hide the node inside the object, at thresholds and choke points, on the intent-proven surfaces. For a typical home, that's around 3–5 nodes (inside the door frame trim, inside the primary bedroom nightstand, inside a jewelry box, inside a safe, inside a guitar case if you have one). For a vehicle, typically 1–2 (inside the dashboard fascia and inside the cargo compartment). For a specific object (guitar, laptop, artwork), one is enough. The app helps you plan placement based on what you're protecting.

Custom stickers are printed on order. Send a photograph of the surface (or a physical swatch for luxury or gallery contexts) and we print a matching sticker that reads as invisible under normal inspection. Turnaround for custom sticker printing is typically 5–10 business days. Standard-sheet stickers ship with every node so you can install day one on any common surface while you wait for the custom print.