NextAlarm or other broadband monitoring

In my opinion, Internet monitoring is not ready for prime time ...... yet.

Every time the net goes down you're going to get a call. pretty soon it'll become useless because you can't run up to the vacation house or send somebody over every time. Probably land line with 24 hour check in and maybe a cellular or radio backup. You can get 24 hour check in on cellular also. But not to your cell phone. Your're gonna have to pay for the service.

If you get the right panel and cellular/radio backup, you can report a loss landline on the cellular and a loss of cellular/radio network, on the landline. That is, if you get a panel that has a loss of telephone line monitoring output that can trip a zone on a cellular/ radio backup and a cellular/radio with a loss of network output to trip the control panel. That's how I set up all of my backup system.

Many do not.

That was my suspicion, but I'm hoping to hear from someone who has actually tried it.

I suppose the monitoring company might be able to reduce this nuisance if their system is programmed to call the alarm box via landline or cell in the event of loss of net connectivity. During the net outage it could poll the panel every 15 minutes or something.

Is that the typical polling period used by monitoring companies?

So if you don't have a backup channel, a typical system monitored by landline won't detect a line cut until the next day?

-Tom

Bingo. A "line cut" will usually show up as a "trouble" on your alarm keypad (and if you have cellular backup, it'll transmit that to the CS).

The "polling period", normally called a test signal is set up by the installing company not the CS. For instance the big guys test less frequently than the independents. I test all my systems daily, some more frequently - depending on risk. However, loss of a test sig. is generally treated as a trouble not an alarm.

So that sounds like the panel is making the periodic outbound connection to the monitoring company, rather than the monitoring company polling the alarm panel.

That would make sense, as I was wondering how you'd handle those incoming calls in the situation where the alarm panel is sharing a phone line with the household.

Given this, if you had an always available communication channel, like the Internet or GPRS, then it would make sense to set the frequency of the "I'm OK" signal to something on the order of minutes.

-Tom

RHC: Tom, I have had some very limited experience with using VoIP on a conventional alarm, forced on me by existing customers changing out their phone line without consulting with me beforehand.

I ended hooking up six customers, but only with daily tests and reports on each of them, watched by me like a hawk !! I won't bother you with the horror stories, but bottom line, I ended up disconnecting four of them. One would send it's test signal four days out of seven; one sent an alarm on the wrong account number; one just wouldn't send properly in spite of numerous attempts to wire things differently after the VoIP provider changes things his end, and the fourth sent it's initial set up test signals but failed to perform after that. The other two panels seem to work fine and are still in service. I tried several different communication formats each time, but the end result was always the same.

The worst thing is when you disconnect the client, they are always miffed at you, as if you are doing something wrong. And right behind you is some scumbag company only too happy to take their money all the while refusing to do any special testing for your lost customer. And the customer accepts their claim that VoIP is "no problem" usually because that is what they WANT to hear.....(can anyone spell STUPID....)

Bottom line, it just isn't worth it !! Even after signing a very scary special liability limiting contract, some customers who should know better simply refuse to believe that VoIP won't work with alarm panels properly and will insist on using it. The high tech industry has conditioned people to believe that just about anything is possible today vis a vis communication capabilities. Security is not like email; it HAS to work when needed.......

When people call me up for a consultation on security matters for their home, the first question I ask now is what communication vehicle are they using ?

Correct. With a landline it will disconnect the household phones during test time so we usually test once very early in the morning. Internet is different, so is cellular.

Tom, you'll have to excuse our un-learned friend above, but he lives in La La land and doesn't know the difference between VoIP and using the internet as a a transmission medium for alarm signals. He obviously hasn't read the thread and doesn't know that you were not considering VoIP. He also doesn't know that VoIP as provided by a number of Cable TV companys are giving pretty good communication capability for alarm systems. I live in the North East US and Cablevision is the VoIP provider here. We had problems when they first started but they've since adjusted their network and their service to accomodate alarm panels. It's seems to be working pretty good now. We can even accomplish downloading. I've heard that in other areas of the country other cable companys are also giving good service. Where VoIP tends to cause problems with other devices is when after-market companys like Vonage are involved. They just can't provide the same bandwidth that the actual cable companys can.

Robert tends to think that if he experiences something ......... it's true throughout the world and everyone should do what he does.

Right. I was asking specifically about NextAlarm or a similar service designed specifically for alarm monitoring over broadband.

The NextAlarm service appears to use a Linksys PAP2T VoIP adapter that has custom firmware to decode the Contact ID codes from the alarm panel and transmit them as data.

(Actually, the information on their site is a little vague. They imply they are doing something special with the signal, and transmitting it as data, but elsewhere claim that the problem with most VoIP providers is that they put your signal through too many analog-to-digital (and the reverse) transitions as it traverses between the Internet and the PSTN.

But they could accomplish avoiding that simply by using a stock ATA (PAP2T) and having it connect directly to one of their servers, which directly demodulates the data from the digitized audio stream. Then it would go through only one A-to-D conversion.

I wonder if the PAP2T is built on GPL licensed software, as many Linksys products are. If so, it might be possible to compel NextAlarm to release their modifications, if any. Then any $50 PAP2T could be converted to an alarm-to-Internet bridge.

I suppose in a few years most panels will come with Ethernet jacks and this will be a moot issue.)

NextAlarm also offers an Abbra Professional (a version of a Visonic Powermax Plus) panel with apparently custom firmware that causes it to transmit data for any and all events, even when the system isn't armed. They dub this feature FAST:

One example they give for how this might be useful, is having a door sensor trigger a snapshot to be recorded from a video camera. (NextAlarm also provides IP camera recording services.)

I'm not aware of any other broadband monitoring services that work with multiple alarm panels, but I've ran across a broadband adapter for the GE Simon line of panels:

which apparently is designed to work with GE's Premises Connect web site It seems to provide features similar to what alarm.com offers via GPRS (like remote arm/disarm and sensor status). But I've been able to find almost no details on Premises Connect. I don't know if there is a subscription fee, or if that's built-in to the price of the interface. I assume the service gets resold, but I've yet to see anyone offering it.

It seems any option beyond a traditional land-line monitoring company is going to involve vendor lock-in (either alarm.com for the GPRS option, or NextAlarm for the Internet option). With NextAlarm there is at least the possibility of reconfiguring the ATA to connect to a different vendor, or one of my own servers.

-Tom

Their ATAs probably call their Asterisk server running the alarm receiver application, so any unlocked ATA should work if they are willing to let you configure your own ATA.

I ran across mention of uControl

today. Their site is really vague, but they seem to offer a home automation platform that includes alarm monitoring services via Internet, cell, and phone.

There are no specifics of how the service works, what it works with, or what it costs. They don't even list resellers of their service. All you can do is fill out a form for more info.

-Tom

Yeah, I just ran across the AlarmReceiver program for Asterisk:

Apparently Contact ID is just a rapid stream of DTMF tones, so that should be pretty trivial to decode with the hardware in an ATA.

I also ran across some references of people using stock ATAs to monitor alarms with Asterisk.

NextAlarm responded to a small subset of the questions I sent them (which doesn't instill a lot of confidence), but among their responses were:

"The PAP2T does run custom firmware to act as an ABN adapter..."

I looked into whether the PAP2T uses GPL firmware, and the answer seems murky. Linksys doesn't seem to provide the source, as they do for some of their products, but postings on message boards suggest that the PAP2T (and its predecessor) is based on GPL code, and competing manufacturers using the same or similar hardware platform are using GPL code.

If Linksys is treating the PAP2T firmware as proprietary, that raises the question of how did NextAlarm get a customized version. Did they contract with Linksys to get it developed, or did they reverse engineer the code?

-Tom

I am not buying the fact that they are using custom firmware. The only way to find out is to obtain one of their boxes and look at their firmware/setup. But why bother ?

Looks familiar ?

May want to take a look at this also.

http://www.uc>> Tom Metro wrote:

Yes, it's just another domain/brand of NextAlarm.com. (See the whois records.)

I posted about uControl in another message, and said, "Their site is really vague, but they seem to offer a home automation platform that includes alarm monitoring services via Internet, cell, and phone. There are no specifics of how the service works, what it works with, or what it costs. They don't even list resellers of their service. All you can do is fill out a form for more info."

But thanks for the pointers.

-Tom

It may be..."sell it first, we'll make it work (maybe) later" deal

There are panels that can do what you want, but they're more expensive than you're thinking, and they're not DIYer stuff.