Monitoring when I dont have a POTS line

I have a ELK M1 with IP monitoring to alarm relay but I am looking to help a friend who was just the victim of a "smash and dash" type break-in. they trashed her house really good. Needless to say they lost a lot of things and though they want an alarm money is tight...

they have cablvision cable internet with their phone service so their is no pots line. I was looking at alarm relay and what I found intertesitng pricing depending on the modulez
Telegard TG1 where $20.95 per month
HAI C3 was the regular $8.96
Alarmnet was $23.95

I will give them a call today but I am assuming the Telegard includes in the ceullar bu the HAI C3 is bring your own? If I were to do a bring your own are there still really good ATT deals out there? I remember some old threads where guys were buying pay as you go minutes that were super cheap and didnt roll off.

Or should I be looking at nextalarm and the ABM unit? I didnt even see a monthly price for that on their website.

I was thinking of installing a GE concord system for them, I have put them in before and they work out a lot cheaper then the elk(though not as nice) especialy because the wireless sensor receiver is built in the $99 startup package.

I have an HAI C3 on my Elk and the standard monitoring package (something like $110/year) from watchlight (they have two names, I forget the other one, maybe Alarm Relay?). I have an ATT GSM card. You can get the card for free at an ATT store and put $100 on it at the kiosk (if you use the kiosk the sales tax is taken off of the $100 instead of added to it, and you still get the 1 year expiration, saving you about $8 worth of minutes you don't need). This will give you one year to use the minutes. And trust me, you won't even come close to using them if the alarm is the only thing on it. Watchlight has been very reliable calling us on every false alarm within seconds. Setting up the Elk is exactly the same with an HAI C3 as it is with a POTS line.

So in sum, your start up costs

~$250 for HAI C3
$100 ATt 1-year
$110 Watchlight
~$35 setup charge

Then anual costs
$100 ATT
$110 Watchlight

If those other prices include the hardware, it would take 5 years before HAI's initial price was recovered. Somehow I don't think the hardware is completely free.

I tried the HAI C3 and had troubles with it integrating with the regular phone line (it would always do GSM, never switch to POTS). If you have no POTS, no issue of course.

I ended up switching for the Uplink 2500, and am very happy with it. I have it powered by the alarm system, and the alarm system offers some rudimentary trouble monitoring that with the C3 you will find out about only if you test and fail. The C3 has its own built in power backup battery, and is intended to be powered by a separate transformer, though I think one could use the Elk power instead of the transformer (if memory serves it was 12V DC). I worried a bit about the built in battery, as not sure how well supervised that is. If I had kept it I would have looked into powering it from the Elk and removing the battery as an unmonitored point of failure).

The very nice thing about the C3 is that it looks like POTS to the alarm companies, so you have more options there and less hassle (even ones who do Uplink need a bit of prodding to do it with full reporting codes).

You need the serial adapter from Elk for the Uplink, nothing for the C3, so a bit more investment. If you want to power it with supervised power separately (e.g. the 212S) it's quite a bit more by the time you buy a can + power + battery + serial. I did, I like the setup, I know I have reserve power and supervision and didn't have to kludge something together. Others may not want so much supervision and redundancy.

I prefer to have the GSM aspect under a plan where I do not have to remember to swap cards or add minutes. I would have put it under our AT&T plan for $10/mo. The Uplink is about $7.50/mo extra from NextAlarm (I think less if annual, my total POTS + GSM is $22.45/mo). To so me they are effectively the same price.

Overall I am very pleased with the uplink. It looks and feels a bit more industrial strength both in terms of setup, power and integration with the Elk. But for a no-POTS solution the C3 was quite nice.

Yes, it is 12vdc and you can run it off of your Elk power supply. However, it is stated as being 1500ma. I assume that this is max draw while in a phone call. If you are interested, I could take actual measures of my unit's standby power consumption. You would have to figure out your total power consumption on your system before adding it. I actually have mine running on an ATX power supply which is on a UPS.

The built in battery is basically 3AA nicads. I have not tested them to exhaustion, but have had a time where it was unplugged for much of the day and it still was all lit up. No calls were made, just standby.

I also used to have the $10/mo add a line deal with ATT, but then I changed cell phone co's so I could no longer just have it as an added line. At that point it became a much better deal to do prepaid. I have to refill it once per year, I put it on my outlook calander. Only ATT and Tmobile use GSM nationally so those are probably your only choices.

I'm not sure how uplink unit works. The alarm system monitors the HAI the same as it would a POTS line. You get a dial tone off the hai unit and the elk recognizes if the dial tone goes away and reports trouble the same as a pots line. It wouldn't know if the cellular system was down without doing a test call just the same as it wouldn't know if the POTS line was down at some switching station that didn't kill your dial tone.

Depends on the host panel, however the C3 doesn't always play nice with every panel or communicator out there, nor is it bulletproof and works with every service provider.

If you post up the host panel, a better choice may be pointed out, but personally, I wouldn't recomment the C3, though some like it based on the DIY criteria.

For an Elk, I prefer the 2500 and separate power supply route. It prices out similar to other manufacturer's units for equivalent equipment.

For other host panels, I've used Telular's (all the TG series) the Uplink 2530's (and higher series) DSC/Connect 24 GS3060's, and Alarmnet 7845's and other flavors of their units.

I was looking to use this with a GE concond

With a Concord, you're better options would be a Uplink 2530 or higher, Telular TG1 or TG1E or DSC GS3060, or any other dialer capture based unit, depending on who your CS accepts. The easiest would be Uplink, as the CS does not need to be an Uplink dealer/service reseller.

Just looked at the ads for the uplink 2530. It seems that it works pretty much the same as the CAI unit? It connects to the phone output on the panel and transmits to CS over GSM using the same protocols you would use over POTS line. It looks like CS doesn't need anything different than POTS line?

The differences I see
1) Cheaper (significantly so)
2) Doesn't allow a POTS line connection
3) Doesn't come with power supply/backup battery
4) Doesn't allow for dial tone to regular phone? Or does it?

What else?
Based on what I see here, if you are doing a connection to CS that is cellular only and the cellular line is dedicated to the alarm panel, then this would save you $80 (except you have to do something to power it which may or may not cost money).

So your saying the Cablevision modem doesn't have standard phone jacks? I'm not familiar with Cablevision equipment my cable modem has two standard phone jacks (allowing two phone lines). The security system is wired as is typical when using a land line.

Frederick C. Wilt said:

So your saying the Cablevision modem doesn't have standard phone jacks? I'm not familiar with Cablevision equipment my cable modem has two standard phone jacks (allowing two phone lines). The security system is wired as is typical when using a land line.

Click to expand...

voip connections do not necessarily work. If yours works that's great, but I would check with your CS to see what they have to say about it. You may not have a 100% reliable communication.

Frederick C. Wilt said:

So your saying the Cablevision modem doesn't have standard phone jacks? I'm not familiar with Cablevision equipment my cable modem has two standard phone jacks (allowing two phone lines). The security system is wired as is typical when using a land line.

Click to expand...

The issues to consider are this:

Generally the modem has either no or minimal backup via UPS or similar. Using VOIP (or the buzzword of digital voice, same thing) is the service providers do not have to provide service up to any minimum standard, unlike a utility like the telco. They have improved over the years, but they do not have the same redundancies and requirements as a utility. The ATA modem may or may not provide voltage to an analog phone even if the TCP/IP connection is down or latent. The communications have improved over the years compared to when VOIP really started to become prevalent, however most services I've dealt with around here typically do network service/upgrades during the night, which leads to no service. Having accounts set to daily test at a typical time window, it's pretty straightforward to see how the service isn't as reliable as most think it is. We went from 80% failed test timers across 4 ISP's to somewhere around 30-40% failed. Not a good percentage for an alarm.

TCP/IP monitoring is more prevalent on commercial systems and fire alarm, however most are connected to commercial grade network hardware and ISP services, which tend to be more reliable than most consumer grade services and hardware.

YMMV.

Curious. I have had problems with my security system failing tests and it is connected via a analog voice line from my phone company. My daughter's security system is the one connected via the cable company phone service and all is well. Go figure.

I have an M1G account that I was asked to install a Uplink 2500 on as the primary because of telco issues in their section of town. They have intermittent grounds that appear on their lines that knock out the voice section of their POTS, however DSL is unaffected.

Pulling half of their phone line off or unplugging the Dmarc jack tends to reset it. Ended up wiring the telco through the M1 and an XOVR to provide a reset, automatically and via remote.

An FYI. I measured the standy draw on the HAI C3 unit. It is 155ma. Didn't measure during a call. I wonder if things would be the same no matter what or if it would be higher draw for weaker signals (further away towers). No way for me to test that without a major PITA so I will not be doing it.

All cells have initial currents then peak values when transmitting at certain times.Nothing to do with distance from towers, as the handset/bases don't modify their transmission output based on reception, nor do the "bars" shown by units actually mean that's what the cell "sees" at any particular time, because the signal fluctuates greatly and very quickly when viewed on a dB meter/scope.

It's part of the reason(s) why most alarm cellular providers spec a supply that is capable of 2X+ the idle current draw.