I bought a wireless Honeywell 7000 or 8000 alarm system online. I think it came from alarm.com. Installation took 1/2 day for all the windows, doors, smokes, and motions. I use a $20/mo or so monitoring service I found on the internet. Honeywell uses both cellular and internet to communicate. If there is an alarm, it uses cellular to notify the alarm company and if the internet is up, I get notification text of the alarm and which device was triggered. The alarm company calls me first and if I don't answer, my wife and then it calls the sheriff's department. They too know which switch was triggered. "I'm getting an alarm from the kitchen door." Almost all my alarms were doors not properly closed. During an alarm, I can log into my cameras and see if anything was amiss using my Blue Iris camera system.
If there is an alarm and it's false, I can reset it from my phone which is nice. My last system wouldn't do that and I'd get a false alarm when I was out of town one day 1 and it couldn't be reset and I didn't have coverage until the event was cleared manually from the control panel which could be days later.
I can also arm it on and off from my phone, nice if friend or family needs to come by while you are gone to check something. Finally, I sometimes can't remember if I set the alarm when I left the house and I can log in to my system and check the status.
The newer Honeywell systems have great screens and so much easier to program than my old Ademco system which was like programming with DOS. You also get notification when a wireless switch is going bad or needs a new battery (which are cheap lithiums you can get anywhere).
If there is an alarm and it's false, I can reset it from my phone which is nice. My last system wouldn't do that and I'd get a false alarm when I was out of town one day 1 and it couldn't be reset and I didn't have coverage until the event was cleared manually from the control panel which could be days later.
I can also arm it on and off from my phone, nice if friend or family needs to come by while you are gone to check something. Finally, I sometimes can't remember if I set the alarm when I left the house and I can log in to my system and check the status.
The newer Honeywell systems have great screens and so much easier to program than my old Ademco system which was like programming with DOS. You also get notification when a wireless switch is going bad or needs a new battery (which are cheap lithiums you can get anywhere).
