Process of changing monitoring providers

[Mr.Roboto]

Hello, new to the forum and hopefully a soon to be new Surety customer!

Our contract just ended with Vivint and now looking at what new options are out there. What I’m finding is that I cannot reuse our Vivint panel (2gig GC2 aka sky panel) as there is not a compatible comm card for it. Is this still true?

Also, I’m finding that all the various cameras and sensors we own to be an issue now upon moving things around. Per researching our devices it looks most run on 345 mhz and would need a panel capable of talking to them. As far as the cameras; I have a sky doorbell cam, an outdoor cam and indoor camera among others. I’ve read they can only be associated with one alarm.com account at a time. So I need to make sure they are still compatible and usable with new panel.

My questions are: How do I know that my cameras are hooked on the backend to alarm.com through Vivint still? I’ve attempted to login to alarm.com with my Vivint creds to no avail. With this current Vivint contract, panel and cameras I’ve only accessed through Vivint login. Our last contract with old GC panel I could and did login to alarm.com but hasn’t been the case this time around.
If I delete the cameras through the panel will that pull them out of alarm.com account or is that step needed along with pulling out of alarm.com account? Do I need to call Vivint (would rather not) or alarm.com to have this done?

Going forward, I’m looking at buying a Qolsys iq panel 2 plus which has the added daughter card for the 345Mhz. support. I found this on ebay for a good price and it already has an ATT cellular card in it. How do I know I can use this with Surety/alarm.com? I believe I can get the IMEI number from seller.

Am I on the right path? Are there any other gotcha’s I need to look out for?

This looks to be a big project. Exciting with lots of learning involved. Appreciate any help given and hopefully I’ll be able to contribute back on here and pay it forward

[Mr.Roboto]

Another note to mention on the cameras, since all the existing cameras came as part of an installation package most of them are Vivint branded even down to having their own Vivint firmware in place of manufacturers.

Upon researching I’ve found most of the Alarm.com and Vivint cameras at that time were actually Vivotek cameras rebranded. Saying that, I know that several features were locked out by Vivint through their firmware usage. It appears I could push new firmware to all my cameras to gain access to all manufacture installed features. Otherwise just doing a hard reset on all the cameras would yield me the same vendor branded locked down software moving forward to new control panel.

Has anyone tried this yet and would you advise for or against it?

[rreynolds (Roy)]

Welcome @Mr.Roboto!

GC2 and Sky panel are different. If you have a GC2 you can use it with Alarm.com by updating the firmware and replacing the cellular module. If you have a Sky panel it can only be used with Vivint.

Compatibility with your devices depends. We’ve found that older Vivint sensors are regular Honeywell/2GIG 345 MHz but newer ones seem to have been slightly tweaked to only work with Vivint panels. For example the dw11 and dw21r will only work with Vivint panels but the dw10 and dw20 are compatible.

My advice is to reply with a list of the exact part numbers for your panel, sensors and cameras and we’ll let you know whether each one should work with Alarm.com or whether it will only work with Vivint.

If your login only works with Vivint and not Alarm.com then I’d guess that you have a Sky panel and you no longer have an Alarm.com account because they’ve switched you over to their own non-Alarm.com cloud system.

You’re on the right path with the IQ Panel 2+ 345 MHz variant. If you can get the IMEI number you can check whether it can be monitored by a new Alarm.com account here.

The biggest gotcha would be that some of your equipment might be newer “Sky panel” equipment that only works with Vivint. We can help you determine that based on the part numbers. Feel free to attach pics if you can’t find the part numbers and we’ll do our best to help.

[Mr.Roboto]

Thanks for the info @rreynolds!

I ran the Qolsys panel IMEI # that I’m looking at buying through the activation link you sent. Said it was successful.

I’m a newb with Cellular modules outside of simm cards for cell phones so does it matter what cell card the panel has in it (ATT vs. Verizon, etc)? I’m working on getting a list of part numbers added here soon and really appreciate all the help.

Below are pics of our Vivint panel.

!

The door and window sensors are the dw11 and dw21 models. Am I right in saying that so far all this equipment is proprietary to Vivint?

Hindsight 20/20, I really wish I would have researched the equipment itself more when we bought it. The sales pitch was that when the contract is over you own all the equipment and you can add equipment anytime you want. What they didn’t say and I didn’t know to ask was did they mean that any current industry standard equipment or just Vivint’s equipment… lessons learned.

[jwcsurety (Jason)]

does it matter what cell card the panel has in it (ATT vs. Verizon, etc)?

It does to a point. You would want to verify that you use a carrier that has good coverage at your location. We have found that Verizon has generally wider coverage, but if both have equal coverage at your location, then it would be a personal preference. If you have any questions on coverage, send us a private message with your proposed address and we can tell you the best option for your area. The maps are general and won’t take local topography and construction into account of course, so there can be some variation on site.

Whichever way you go, you never have to directly deal with any carrier - there are no separate cell service charges, they are included in your monthly service plan through Surety.

The door and window sensors are the dw11 and dw21 models. Am I right in saying that so far all this equipment is proprietary to Vivint?

In general we’ve not heard any successful reports of using these models with other panels unfortunately.

If you have any Z-wave lights or door locks those can be reused typically if you are able to remove them from the Sky Panel. You would need access to Z-wave inclusion and removal in the Sky Panel programming.