When you are burgled you may loose thousands of dollars worth of your personal items, have hundreds of dollars worth of damage and some people especially women feel that their home has been invaded and no longer want to live in their house. So paying a little out now on an alarm may save you a lot of grief in the future and there is less worry, which also may save you from a heart attack. People have dropped dead after coming home and finding their home had been wrecked/burglarised.
Before I went away on holiday I was a bit worried about leaving the house empty for a long period and so we decided to go along to the Christchurch Home Show and look at a few of the latest home alarm systems.
The one that impressed us the most was the one from Smart Alarm. The alarm uses a mobile SIM card to text you when the 110db alarm goes off. When living in the UK we had endless sleepless nights when house and car alarms were going off continuously. We did not care about why the alarms were going off we just wanted to get a lump hammer and smash them. This alarm has a siren fitted inside the house so that burglars are driven out by the noise. Close neighbours may hear the alarm, but it would not be enough to make them feel like committing murder to shut it up.
When the alarm goes off a text is sent immediately to up to 5 mobile phones. When doing a test we got the text within 5 seconds and the only time I can see this being much longer is when there is a major disaster or new years eve when the telephone network would be swamped with texts.
The IR detectors work off batteries that last a year and the main unit works off of the power supply, but have an internal battery in case there is a power failure. You can have detectors in a separate garage or shed. There is also door and window sensors, panic buttons, smoke alarms and LPG gas detectors that can be included as well. The remote control also has a panic button in case you see someone lurking outside.
We left a remote control with the neighbour who is also one of the people to receive a text if the alarm goes off.
This system is not just an alarm. If we were on the other side of town with my next door neighbour and the alarm went off we can call into the alarm and listen for suspicious noises or voices. If we hear anything dodgy we can call the police. If all seems OK we can remotely reset and rearm the alarm.
The only maintenance is to change the batteries in the wireless sensors and top up the SIM card with $10 once a year.
You could also have this system at your business without having to have a telephone line.
Our system was put in by Smart Alarm on 03 960 1111, but you can probably find similar suppliers in other areas.
If you have bought an innovative product that does its job well let us know and we might tell everyone about it on this blog.
Very Interesting! I live in Canada and i wonder why the home alarm companies here don’t use Text to warn the alarm has been set off. I have one home alarm and i would suggest them that they also give us text alert along with two way voice technology.