Speech/Voice Dialer

[Guest Tes]

Hi all,

Great site, lucky I came across it.

I currently have a home alarm system installed by British Gas Security in July 2001. It cost £££ and I have been paying £25 a month for a monitored system to alert a call centre if there is an intruder alert of fire.

However due to the fact that since Oct 2001 Police require confirmation that a burglary is in progress before answering an alert, I don;t think this service is worth what we are paying. They try to call us and our two key holders first, by which time I reckon our house will have been emptied!

So I am wondering about getting a speech dialer to alert us ourselves. British Gas Security want to charge me £125 "upgrade fee" and then £14.50 a month for maintenance.

So I am trying to price up how much it would cost to buy a speech dialer myself and have a qualified electrician install it (my DIY skills are severely limited!)

I have found the following dialers so far:-

GARDTEC SPEECH DIALER 11 (£69.00)

PYRONIX VOCALISER AUTODIALER (£83.05)

Menvier SD1+ Digital Speech Dialler (£126.68)

Do you have any comments or suggestions about these or any others that are available?

I realise that as a London resident, call out charges for electricians are fairly high so if things do go wrong often I could possibly end up out of pocket even without a standard monthly charge to pay!

Any advice is most welcome

Tes

[Service Engineer]

Hello Tes,

My personnal favourite is the Gardtec Speechdialer, its simple to install and really easy to set up, and as far as your conserned its also easy to configure should you ever require a keyholder phone number change. Takes about an hour to install.

Next inline would be the Vocaliser, it comes with a microphone so you can actually phone into it and listen for activity in your home, if you were to hear movement or voices you could speak through the phone you dialed in on and they would hear your message through a loudspeaker mounted in your house. Its a nice unit, not as easy to install and is a little more awkward for you to change options on at a later date should you need to. Takes from 2 hours to install, so allow half a day .

Lastly is the SD1+, very simillar to the Gardtec version, but features an LCD Display, not really worth the extra £55+

So then, youve already priced up the units yourself, theres no ongoing costs to any of these units, but expect to pay around £125 to £150 + VAT to have the Speechdialers installed, a little more for the Vocaliser.

The £14.50 per month quoted by British Gas is a little too much in my opinion, but then things are always more expensive in London.. Just as an example my boss charges £11.75 per month for what we call full cover, thats replacement of all faulty parts, a yearly service, and any day or night time EMERGENCY callouts as required.

[Guest Tes]

Brilliant, thanks for the advice!

Tes

[Service Engineer]

Your quite welcome Tes, but remember, just as with your existing monitoring.....

If the intruder cuts the phone lines before entering your property then no one will be notified by phone.

[Guest Adrian]

Of course you could upgrade your monitoring to duel com that is phone line and radio, If one side of the coms goes down then the other side will sent a signal telling the monitoring.

For exsample an intruder cuts your phone line the radio side will send a signal saying there is a phone line fault. he breaks in trips the alarm and an intruder signal gets sent to the monitoring. and the police called (dependant on your set up) all via the radio.

Just a thought for you.

By the way if you shop around you may be able to get the menvier SD1+ speech dialer cheaper than you quoted here.

Adrian

[Guest Ruvs71]

British Gas monitored alarms only cost £25 because when you have it installed it is new, but when you move into a new home if there is already one installed there it is only £19.50.

The best system to go for if you do not like the monitored one is the Speech dialer system because it calls up to 4 pre-Stored numbers including mobiles and also activates an external sounder which all comes in with the quoted price. Another convenient feature of the system is a fey fob system which is also included in the Speech dialer system which allows you to set/unset the system without having to enter any form of password.

[Guest ieb]

Hi,

You might like to consider SMShield as well. As it's GSM based, there is no line to cut. When activated it'll send you a text message (and up to two others), and can call your phone, the text will tell you exactly what's happening. Whether it be just a simple SET/UNSET notification, mains failure or "Front Door Open".

All you need is a pay-as-you-go SIM card and away you go. It's probably small enough to fit inside your existing panel and there are no monitoring or on-going fees to pay (other than network call charges, which can be as little as 1p per text). It also doesn't go through any other third party monitoring system, it's just like sending a text message, only this time, it'll be your house!

Ian

more at SMShield Webpage

[Guest MarkP]

I'd also have a look at the Texecom Speech and Text dialler.

It can store several contact numbers, you can listen in and talk back and it can also send SMS messages to mobile phone.

Very easy to set up, well made and good value for money.

MarkP

[morph]

Even if you do fit a dialler, you will have to have the panel reprogrammed. As the panel already has a comunicator built in, you could have the system reprogrammed to call the recieving centre, who will then call you and your keyholders. This would cost less than having a dialler fitted.

If this is of interest to you send me an email and I can give you further information.

Colin.