Armory Sponsor
Posted: 1/16/2010 6:14:40 PM EDT
| An ADT (or whoever) salesman came to my door today offering a "free system" for a few homes in the neighborhood. All I had to do was post their sign in my front lawn etc, etc, etc. Sounded like BS to me. It did get me thinking however. What systems/companies do you guys recommend? |
|
Quoted:
IMHO ADT is an organized criminal enterprise... Stay far away... They make it difficult or impossible to cancel the monitoring contract... I put in my own system (based on an Ademco/Honeywell Vista-20P panel)... That sounds about right. I even told the guy "no thanks, I've already got an alarm system" just in case he was doing some "research" of his own. How hard would it be for me to install my own system? I'm no electrician but I can follow directions (mostly...mostly). Quoted:
Free alarm = cheap wireless system and a high monthly. You do get what you pay for. Agreed. That said, do you have a recommendation for a good company or system? |
|
I do have a good background in electronics - it's probably not necessary (if you can follow directions and color coded wires), but it probably helped me a lot in being able to interpret some of the installation instructions...
The installation and wiring of sensors is mostly grunt work - in my case I did it in the middle of a major renovation, and so having clear access to studs and floor joists (because the old sheetrock had been largely removed) helped a great deal. The most difficult part that I encountered involved "programming" the control panel to handle the different types of sensors properly - the installer documentation is a bit terse and arcane, and making or changing settings via entries on a numeric keypad is tedious. I did get everything hooked up properly, though, and was able to use a local service to handle the monitoring. There are a number of DIY alarm system forums as well as Internet vendors who sell to the general public and have reasonably good support for DIY'ers. If you look around, you can generally find copies of installation and programming manuals on the Internet to help you decide whether or not it's something that you would be comfortable doing..I bought a starter package with the control panel, power supply, battery, and some motion sensors, and then got the rest of the sensors and the alarm wire from eBay... |
|
I did it four years ago and so I don't have a good handle on how much it cost - but I know that I saved a great deal by using eBay. The system that I built had four keypads (with three of them having voice output), three smoke detectors, two carbon monoxide detectors, an explosive gas detector, two PIR motion detectors, perhaps 20 door/window contacts, and a heat/rate-of-rise detector (I should have also had some glass break detectors, but never got around to installing them). I did not use any wireless features, rather everything was hard-wired. There were enough sensors that I needed to use three expansion units (because I wanted to use one sensor per zone).
It's just a guess, but the Vista panel starter kit was probably around $275, each keypad was probably around $60 (through eBay), each expansion unit could have been around $40, the smoke detectors might have been $50 or $60 each, IIRC the gas detectors were pretty expensive, the phone line interface might have been $20, maybe I spent $150 on alarm wire, the window/door sensors might have been $2 or $3 each, the motion detectors were probably $20 each. |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
IMHO ADT is an organized criminal enterprise... Stay far away... They make it difficult or impossible to cancel the monitoring contract... I put in my own system (based on an Ademco/Honeywell Vista-20P panel)... That sounds about right. I even told the guy "no thanks, I've already got an alarm system" just in case he was doing some "research" of his own. How hard would it be for me to install my own system? I'm no electrician but I can follow directions (mostly...mostly). Quoted:
Free alarm = cheap wireless system and a high monthly. You do get what you pay for. Agreed. That said, do you have a recommendation for a good company or system? My advise is to go ask some of a prospective companies current customers how happy they are. I would always choose a small local company over a large chain any day. |
|
Quoted:
That little green box at the end of your street is the telephone circuit. Cut the wire, no more ADT. With the cellular system, its fun when your wife hits the panic button and your cell phone rings while you're getting your gun. My cable company had to run new cable and they cut the phone line by accident. My monitoring company called me within seconds to notify me that they lost the phone signal and that they automatically dispached PD. This as the officer was walking to my front door (turns out he was in the next neighborhood). |
Armory Sponsor