My current setup is this : I have a land line for telephone, which also handles my high speed internet with ADSL. I also have a home alarm system that uses my land line, and is monitored by an alarm company.
My goal :
to monitor my home's alarm system through email or text-messaging to my cell phone (either with cell phone service, which I'm thinking would require another cell phone account ?, or through text-to-my-cell- phone-via-the-internet kinda thing). In other words, I want to quit paying the / month for monitoring services.
to drop my land line service, and instead use VOIP for my home phones, again, to save on the /month bill I get for my phone, but also to get added features, like phone messages being forwarded as attachments to my email...
Am I dreaming ? Is this all possible ?
FYI, I'm in Canada, using Bell for phone and internet, and Protectron for surveillance monitoring.
Sir, there are a few things to think about before making the kind of moves you speak about. First of all, "self monitoring " that you refer to is not a reliable option. It can be made to work (with some panels), but is only as reliable as the service at your end. Also, you will get nothing of any real intelligence sent to the cellphone (or pager), other than the squeal of a modem in the panel trying to connect to the receiver at the station (or a virtually unintelligible string of numbers on a pager).
Pure VoIP is NOT currently a viable option for monitoring your alarm system (other than the Rogers phone option which is a form of VoIP). Having tried services such as Vonage myself with some customers on a trial basis, it is hopelessly unreliable. Bottom line, most alarm companies will not hook you up over VoIP. Those few that do are more interested in your money than your security IMO. In my experience, the panel will work about 4 days out of seven (based on daily test signals received or not), and the danger of "ghost signals" being incorrectly received at the station are very real (ask me how I know....)
If your prime motive is to keep the monthly rate down, I suggest you call Protectron and re-negotiate your rate. They are an excellent company with superb monitoring facilities and decent service for a big company. Or worse case, switch to one of the internet stations that specialize in direct to end user monitoring for around $10. But you should know, their service options are EXPENSIVE (where they exist at all), and you are basically totally on your own without the software and hardware support that a dealer offers.
Like all things in life, the consumer is responsible for the decisions he or she makes. IMO, these are an extremely poor choice of options. So are you dreaming ?...no, but doing either of these things could create a"nightmare" for you.
Bottom line, you get what you pay for. (Sorry to be so blunt, but I get these questions continually from people over the phone....)
R.H.Campbell Home Security Metal Products Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
I think if you were to put it as follows, at least we could tell that you had looked at this honestly ......... You should have said, ....... Protecting my home and family is not as important to me as is saving $30.00 a month.
Why don't you just switch over to VoIP, making sure with the provider that it will support alarm transmissions first? Monitoring your alarm system on your cell phone, you may as well reduce the probablity of being notified by 50%. How many times have you found yourself in a cell dead zone? How many times have you turned your cell off and forgotten to turn it back on, or left it home or in the car or at work? How often does the cell network go down in your area? Do you really know? Anyone ever tell you that they left a message on your cell, but you never received it?
Alarms systems are usually installed to ward off those situations that we all hope are not going to happen, but we just like to have that little bit of additional protection, to take care of the worse case possibility. So, now after having an alarm system installed for those reasons, it's now not as important as it was before? Are your wife or kids ever home alone? What would happen if someone were to attempt a break-in while one of them were home, they pressed the panic button and you missed the call? You're willing to take that chance ...... now ...... that you can possibly save ...... what? $30.00?
Betting man ...... are you?
Hell, why bother with an alarm at all? You could tie pots and pans up on strings around the perimiter of your house and be just as well off.
: What a crappy response. Jim, do you sell alarm monitoring for a living? Most of us understand that the process of notification will take longer by putting someone else in the middle (monitoring service). They call the homeowner first anyway. Might as well have the alarm call the homeowner cutting out the response time. As for the scenarios you represent--they seem a bit contrived. I'm pretty sure when you see your alarm number calling, you are going to "answer" that call.
He asked for advice, not your sales pitch.
------------------------------------- Jim wrote:
##-----------------------------------------------## Delivered via
formatting link
Internet Knowledge Base for the security industry no-spam access to your favorite newsgroup - alt.security.alarms - 44662 messages and counting! ##-----------------------------------------------##
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.