I just moved into a new house. I’m overwhelmed by the number of control panels and different brands of alarm systems/home automation devices left by previous owners. There is an ADT system which appears to be the most recent install:
Ultimately, there is the front door to safeguard. All other possible areas of entry are elevated and would require significant effort to break into. I live in an area where neighboring homes have security cameras pointed everywhere. This seems to provide an element of herd safety.
Based on my research, I would like to move away from ADT, however, the ADT system I have installed seems proprietary and would likely prevent that.
I’m not sure what the Honeywell control panels could offer.
The Comelit brand is European based on my research and either outdated or not really used much in the U.S.
To sum it up:
-My needs are a centrally monitored system to get a certificate for insurance.
-Safeguard the front door, maybe one other door and a window.
-Home automation not necessary, but future ability to do so would be welcome
Based on my limited needs, should I pursue the path of least resistance and sign up for basic monitoring with ADT given the preinstalled system? Try to do something with the Honeywell panels, if possible? Blow it all up and go with Surety/Alarm.com?
The “control panel” is the lower green circuit board in your pic above. It says SAVS20P5 which is a variant of the Honeywell Vista 20P. So your panel is a Honeywell panel. It’s possible that all of your keypads are connected to it, the ADT branded one and the Honeywell ones.
The upper circuit board that says SA5881 is a receiver for wireless sensors.
The white box above it and to the right that says ADT is a cellular communicator that would only work with ADT.
If you wanted to use Surety and Alarm.com with this system you would need a Honeywell System Enhancement Module (SEM) which is another cellular communicator that works with Alarm.com and also enables all the Alarm.com home automation stuff.
Upon further inspection, the Honeywell keypads say “Not Ready” when the door is opened, indicating that, in fact, the Honeywell keypads are connected to the SAVS20P5 panel, correct?
So, the Honeywell SEM would just replace the ADT cellular communicator and then I could be set with Surety/Alarm.com?
That’s correct, you should be good with just the SEM. The existing communicator would need to be removed. Here is a similar thread regarding that type of panel.
So I have removed the ADT communicator and installed an ADC-SEM300-VZ following all the instructions provided and activated it through alarm.com. A zone scan was not performed on the safewatch 3000 keypad when the SEM was powered on. I gave trued cycling the power to no avail. The LED power and path indicator lights are solid on the SEM. The signal LED is not on, indicating no cell reception. I tried a cell test on the keypad with no success. The path LED is off indicating no signal to alarm.com. The trouble LED is also off. When I login to alarm.com, it says system OK. Don’t know where to go from here.
