I am currently an Alarm.com customer with a Simon XT CP. However in coming months I am changing house and my current dealer does not support any other CP other than Simon XT. Unfortunately, Simon XT is too incapable for my new house and I am looking into other CP such as 2gig. Your services and equipment offering looks like to suites my need. Having said that, I have the following questions:
Currently I have the full interactive package from Alarm.com which includes every things possible included kitchen sink. Comparing that with your Gold interactive plan, I see the following limitation:
Your plan has a limit on the number of sensor activity and then charges extra per block of $5.00. To my knowledge, Alarm.com does not have such a limitation and does not charge extra for sensor activity communication. Why there is an extra charge with yours?
Your plan charges $5.00 extra for video monitoring. How many cameras are included in this plan and how much is the storage limit?
Can you please describe “arming schedule” and “smart energy management”?
More than happy to answer any questions. We monitor any Alarm.com compatible systems (Simon XT and 2GIG included). Let me address your questions in order that you posed them. (A summary of which features are included and/or available in the different packages can be found here)
Activity Monitoring: All of the sensors installed on your system are “security monitored”, meaning they can trigger alarms and cause the police to be dispatched. Sensor activity monitoring is an additional Alarm.com service that goes above and beyond security monitoring to let you see the status of specified “activity monitored” sensors through Alarm.com.
Sensor activity monitoring is limited to 10 with Alarm.com’s Gold Interactive because “sensor activity monitoring” dramatically increases the cell phone signal usage of the alarm system. It sends a signal to Alarm.com every time that sensor opens/closes or changes in any way.
Keep in mind that not all sensors can be activity monitored. To understand this, remember that your smoke alarm is either activated or not activated, regardless of the status of your security system. Same for Carbon Monoxide detectors, etc. Activity monitoring allows you to see if your motion detector has been activated recently, or whether a door has been opened, or a window is currently open, etc. even when the system is unarmed. As such I do not feel that all sensors that can be activity monitored are worth activity monitoring. For example I don’t see a real benefit being derived from using activity monitoring on my glass breaks, but I’d pretty interested to see if the motion detector in my office is activated after the dog walker stops by (with no reason to explore that part of my home). But everyone uses their systems differently.
You can add additional sensors to be activity monitored for $2/month for each 5 additional sensors. This is a pass through charge.
Video Monitoring: You can add levels of video monitoring. For $5/month, the basic video package supports up to 4 cameras and has (a very small) 50MBs of storage. As currently designed, its most useful for checking in live. But if you would like to add the next level of video monitoring, it is an additional $5/month and supports up to 8 cameras and 250MB of storage. Each additional 250MB on top of that is another $5/month as well.
Arming schedules: This allows you to set schedules for automatic arming and disarming. We’ve found this feature thus far to be used almost entirely by businesses who do not want to give all employees codes for the alarm. The use of notifications, geo-fence reminders, temporary user codes, and remote arming and disarming make arming schedules unnecessary for most other users. I believe what you would be interested in for the thermostats is smart energy management.
Your plan has a limit on the number of sensor activity and then charges extra per block of $5.00. To my knowledge, Alarm.com does not have such a limitation and does not charge extra for sensor activity communication. Why there is an extra charge with yours?
The additional charges on sensor activity monitoring do come from Alarm.com because Alarm.com has to pay more to the cellular service providers when you do a lot of sensor activity monitoring. I’m hoping those additional charges will decrease or disappear when dual path (cellular and broadband) communication with Alarm.com is used.
Amanda and Ryan,
Thank you for the getting back to me. I have a few more questions which I hope you can answer.
Are there any expansion module or anyways to register more than 40 sensors with Simon XT?
IQ panel from QolSys looks promising, but considering the age of the device and the company what do you think of the following?
IQ CP is based on android OS, can android be a trusted and reliable OS for security system?
How many sensors and z-wave units IQ CP supports?
How many image sensor IQ CP supports?
Does IQ CP supports any hardwire sensors?
How IQ CP compares to 2gig go-control?
If you were to choose between IQ and 2gig for your home which one would you choose?
No, you can’t have more than 40 wireless sensors with Simon XT.
That’s a good question about whether Android can be reliable enough for a security and control system. I think only time will tell. I would guess yes. Android is pretty flexible and Qolsys should be able to tune/tweak it for reliability if they want to. It’s Linux based and I’ve seen some Linux systems run for years without failure and others crash daily depending on how they were configured and compiled. Qolsys should be motivated to focus on reliability in their build.
Off the top of my head I can’t remember how many sensors Qolsys supports, I want to say either 48 or 64. They claim to support up to 5 thermostats, 6 door locks and 32 lights or appliance modules. Although I think that might just be a conservative amount they’ve officially tested with. It does have 2 wired sensor inputs like 2GIG does.
The Qolsys panel compares favorably to the current 2GIG panel in terms of features and specs but that’s to be expected comparing a 4 year old panel to a brand new panel. I can’t say which one I’d choose at the moment, I don’t yet have enough experience with Qolsys to make an informed decision.
I am about to jump the fence and switch my service from the other provider to yours. I checked my GSM module on your site and here is the message I received: “Sorry, your Alarm.com cellular module ####### can not currently be used with a new Alarm.com account. It is aleady registered with an Alarm.com provider.” It sounds like that this is not locked and once my service ends with the other provider can be picked up by yours, is that correct? My other service provide claims they have no lock on my GMS module. Can you help clarify if there is anything I need to do?
The cellular module is registered to the other dealer, and cannot be used with SuretyCAM.
You must contact your current provider and ask them to release/unregister it. If they do not unregister it from ADC, then it has to be replaced as no one else but them can use it regardless if you have service with them or not.
Keep in mind that while a module is in use it is “locked”. Since a module can only be registered to one account at a time, it is impossible to know via the serial number check while you are using the module whether your current provider will release the module when your service is concluded. It sounds as though you have already confirmed with the current provider that their policy is to not leave module’s locked, so that is promising.
From reading the post, I get the impression that his current company is in fact clueless in regards to the locked/registered cellular module.
That leads me to believe that they don’t know how to unlock/unregister it, and never have done it before. Thus he will have to replace the module.
Also, if this system was a free panel/contract install, its a near certainty that they will not release/unlock/unregister the cellular module even if they knew how.
It is almost a rule of thumb that if your panel/cell module was part of a free equip install, and/or you didn’t outright purchase the cellular communicator module yourself, your current service provider will NOT unlock/unregister, or release it for use with another provider. For the most part only providers/dealers that cater to the DIY community will unlock/unregister panels and modules upon request.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this question. I’ll circle this back with my provider and hopefully we can come to an resolution and have them to release the radio module. This was a DIY and I paid for the CP, so I don’t see any reason for them to hold on to it.
Well you will know if and when they unlock/unregister/release the cellular module
It will NOT say this anymore when you check it:
"Sorry, your Alarm.com cellular module ####### can not currently be used with a new Alarm.com account. It is aleady registered with an Alarm.com provider.”
As long as you see the above when you check its registration status, that’s means its locked/registered.