Help Very Much Appreciated -

[Freddie08]

Hi all

 

I've just moved out into the sticks in Hertfordshire, and as we're fairly exposed, I have decided to get an alarm installed.

 

I have seen from a few threads here that the general consensus is that Yale alarms are gash.  With that in mind, I would very much appreciate a few tips of alarms to look out for (and a quote to carry out the work if anyone is near the Herts / Essex border?!)

 

I really am clueless regarding this sort of stuff, so whenever looking at alarm online, I have no idea if some of the things included in packages are really necessary or not. 

 

Thanks in advance

 

Greg

[matthew.brough]

Most of us do share that view on Yale alarms, yes

 

Do you have a budget in mind so we can best advise items suitable to your budget?

[Freddie08]

It did seem that way! I can only stretch to about a grand all in, inc fitting. Again, as I have no real idea, I don't know if I can get anything great with that!

[matthew.brough]

Yes, perfectly doable. One of the systems we install is a system called videofied. This is the ultimate against false alarms as the monitoring station can see what goes on. Some clips are here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FlgYoy8y4 and the website is http://www.videofied.com/eu/uk/home/

 

They do incur a monitoring fee but for your budget you could have a system installed and a years monitoring for that kind of price. It isn't CCTV though, pictures are only sent when the alarm is set and an alarm triggers. The monitoring center can't dial in and see what you are having for tonight's dinner.

 

If you were wanting to avoid a monitored solution where you just have a bell, your budget equally isn't ridiculous but the down side to a ringing bell is most people just ignoring it making your investment to a large degree, worthless. Most pro kit is of a very similar standard, the majority is just different manufacturers as each installer gets familiar with particular kit.

[Freddie08]

That's great, thanks for that. I'd ideally like a monitored alarm for the very reason you stated. No-One cares when an alarm goes off... They just hope it shuts up soon so they can enjoy watching TV in peace.

[matthew.brough]

We have an installation business and also a monitoring center so I have an obvious bias to monitoring but whenever I see a ringing bell no one but no one cares about it. They just want it to shut up.

 

The basic components to the system is the control panel, a keypad and on the videofied system each room you want alarming has a motion viewer. How it works is it has a traditional PIR built it but when it triggers and the alarm is set, it records 10 seconds of video and sends it to the monitoring center for review. We see burglar bill we summons help, if we don't see a criminal activity we either do nothing or advise the keyholder depending on what their needs are. Traditional alarms without video you'd just get called up irrespective of if it was a spider setting it off or a burglar. I think I have a video on how it works, let me check.

[Freddie08]

Cctv is not essential either.. snapshots are more than adequate!

Thanks, really appreciate it

Someone recommended Ricso, but again, not sure how they are rated or if they do anything you suggested regarding monitoring

[matthew.brough]

Here we go. This is a clip from a live site. It is a greenkeepers storage unit in the middle of nowhere that happens to have a resident bird. On a traditional alarm the end user would have been taken off response in about a week and had many late night calls. Because we could see it was a bird we just emailed the customer and told them. http://81.168.26.21/RetroComputingMagazines/1402Bird.wmv

[matthew.brough]

Someone recommended Ricso, but again, not sure how they are rated or if they do anything you suggested regarding monitoring

Emotive subject. There are Risco fans here and not so Risco fans here. They have a cloud based system that lately seems to have had a few issues with outages.

 

Personally, I wouldn't want Risco anything protecting my shed, let alone house but others here like it. We inherited an estate from a company we purchased and that experience has put me off them for life.

It is a budget offering IMO. One of those buy cheap, pay twice products.

It can be monitored to a monitoring center though. We have just agreed to monitor some for other installers with a big disclaimer attached to it.

[Freddie08]

Got you, thanks. The videofied route seems like a good one. Now just need to find someone to sort it all out!!