Upgrade existing Texecom

[Mh12]

Hi guys new here! I’m not clued up on alarms so I started googling for companies near me to come out and quote to upgrade my existing 8+ year old wired alarm system to something that I can control on my phone and for notifications to be sent to me too. 
 

We currently have a texecom veritas wired alarm so I would only need a new panel, keypad, proximity fobs and I need to add 1 wireless door contact for the rear door. 

 

One of the installers showed me the app for Lightsys2 and that is something I want as I can control which doors/areas I want to arm or disarm but, after abit of reading Risco have a bad rep on here so should I avoid lightsys2? Any other brands I should look at? 

[sixwheeledbeast]

Risco may have a bad rep here but if your getting an installer in you should be evaluating the company and there services and let them worry about what kit manufacturer.

That being said I'd keep the Veritas over a Lightsys...

[Mh12]

36 minutes ago, sixwheeledbeast said:

Risco may have a bad rep here but if your getting an installer in you should be evaluating the company and there services and let them worry about what kit manufacturer.

That being said I'd keep the Veritas over a Lightsys...

do you know if it’s possible to upgrade the veritas to a smart alarm so I can control from my phone?

[PeterJames]

The age of your panel would suggest not, but replacing the panel with a panel with self monitoring facilities is possible. I would avoid any that offers free or very cheap annual cloud fee as they will be the least reliable 

[Mh12]

1 hour ago, PeterJames said:

The age of your panel would suggest not, but replacing the panel with a panel with self monitoring facilities is possible. I would avoid any that offers free or very cheap annual cloud fee as they will be the least reliable 

 After sixwheeledbeast suggested to stick with veritas I’ve found another local installer that installs Texecom. He’s said I can upgrade to the premier elite which has an app, he didn’t mention any annual fee so I will research more on this 

[james.wilson]

As per the above any app that is free will be the least reliable. While downtime for heating control, smart lights etc its far from ideal for a security system.

[sixwheeledbeast]

I'm not much of an app fan, plenty more on that in other recent threads, so take that with a pinch of salt I suppose.

Veritas is very basic domestic system so any messaging would be like an addon dialler on outputs.

No app or dialler type unit is guaranteed to get messages to you, there is no polling and lots of things in the chain.

Although paid for services should mean someone is getting paid to make sure they have good uptime.

Company that can provide monitoring is the top solution, you will get a message if there is a fault or activation, this would be separate from an app for control.

 

 

 

[PeterJames]

48 minutes ago, sixwheeledbeast said:

I'm not much of an app fan, plenty more on that in other recent threads, so take that with a pinch of salt I suppose.

Veritas is very basic domestic system so any messaging would be like an addon dialler on outputs.

No app or dialler type unit is guaranteed to get messages to you, there is no polling and lots of things in the chain.

Although paid for services should mean someone is getting paid to make sure they have good uptime.

Company that can provide monitoring is the top solution, you will get a message if there is a fault or activation, this would be separate from an app for control.

 

 

 

Agreed I would always proper recommend monitored with the app as a secondary device. My app always tells me info before the alarm receiving centre (arc) calls me, but I always get a call from the arc to tell me my Wifi is down whereas my app only tells me when the WiFi is back up. 

[al-yeti]

24 minutes ago, PeterJames said:

Agreed I would always proper recommend monitored with the app as a secondary device. My app always tells me info before the alarm receiving centre (arc) calls me, but I always get a call from the arc to tell me my Wifi is down whereas my app only tells me when the WiFi is back up. 

App tells you when it is down no? Polling?

[PeterJames]

3 hours ago, al-yeti said:

App tells you when it is down no? Polling?

Im on a webway for monitoring to the arc and so I only have the wifi module for the app, it does tell me eventually, but the wifi is normally up before it does. My wifi rarely goes down for more than a few minutes