Home Security Blog

The L5100 is the security system that changed the industry forever. Honeywell gave things a try with its predecessor, the L5000, but it just wasn't right. While the L5000 may not have hit on all cylinders, the L5100 was a smashing success. A Z-Wave controller, a security system, and a beautiful, simple to use user interface ushered in a new era of home security. Responsive, colorful, and simple to use, the L5100 made home security accessible to the common man. The result of the simple 3-touch auto-enrolling process for zone programming, or simple typing in of a serial number, made it so there were no longer complicated button presses to get in and out of programming.

Moreover, this wireless panel was the first full-scale wireless panel that truly won over the old-timers who resisted the transition from wired to wireless. The modular approach to adding communicators gave consumers choices about what exactly they want their system to do.

As of today, stock across the country has been exhausted of this groundbreaking panel, and we have discontinued its sale in our store. It has been replaced by Honeywell's newer, bigger, better panels the L5200 and the L7000. These two new panels are wonderful replacements for this workhorse, and we're sure they are going to become the industry standard for years to come. While different in some ways, the L5200 and L7000 are wonderful additions to the Honeywell family and welcome replacements for what was once a revolutionary panel.

We were all affected by 9/11. For those in my generation, there is nothing like it that has ever happened. I remember my father telling stories about the Kennedy assassination and how he remembers where he was when he heard the news. Likewise, I remember sitting in period C math class when over the loudspeaker, all the students were asked to come to the gymnasium where the our principal proceeded to tell us what had just happened. I remember it vividly as a confusing day. Planes were grounded, save for the occasional military aircraft patrolling the sky. People were stuck on vacations. No one knew who had done the act or why.

Now, 13 years later, I find myself working in a company that relies on the same first responders who responded on that fateful day to do routine checks on homes, protecting us from unseen dangers. At Alarm Grid, we hope that all of you who are protected by our monitored security systems are always safe and sound. But we can all be incredibly grateful that when we need them the incredible courage exhibited by police and firemen are welcomed.

So while we can all be a little bit sad today, remembering our fallen fellow Americans, don't forget to say thank you to all of the people whom make our lives a little bit better by keeping us safe.

Honeywell has released the newest revisions for the Tuxedo Touch WIFI, and there are some really exciting new additions. The most notable, perhaps, is the much anticipated voice command feature. When announced at ISC, most of us thought that the Tuxedo Touch with Voice control was going to be an altogether new Tuxedo Touch much like the other voice-enabled keypads in the Honeywell wired series like the 6162V. Instead, Honeywell is making the feature available to anyone with a Tuxedo Touch WIFI installed in their home.

For now the feature is pretty limited, but it is neat, nonetheless. Using commands such as "Bedtime," "Evening Time," "Leaving the House," "Returning Home," "Wake Up," and "Cameras," an user can arm the system, control scenes, and summon Zombies....

Ok, maybe not zombies, but the other stuff is all true.

The new revision update has a lot more than just voice capabilities though. Local video recording lets an user record 2 minute videos using the installed SD card. As much video as the card has capacity to store can be put on the system. Perhaps the most value-add feature is the increase in scenes from 10 to 30. Accompanying the increase is the ability to group like-Z-Wave devices, which makes scenes way more powerful and the programming of Z-wave devices much more intuitive and fast (a really good feature if you've ever had to do it.

We are working on some articles on how to install the new update, so check back here in a little while. We will have more information as we get it.

If you know anything about Alarm Grid, you know that every time you call in, our team will pick up the phone and pick up wherever it was that you last left off. We do our best to make sure that you get both your problems solved, but more than that, that we become intimately involved with your troubleshooting needs and the obscurities that come from your particular system setup. We're a DIY company, and we believe very strongly in the possibilities that come about by knowing the people we are supporting.

We actually get a lot of comments on our method. And while we've been as transparent as we can be regarding everything from divulging the name of our central station partner to listing all the SAAS utilities we use, we thought it was a good time to teach you all how we can all be so familiar with your particular accounts (even if you called a year ago, and are asking for help today.

Alarm Grid is built on an open source shopping cart solution called Solidus (formerly Spree). Spree was built using Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails was developed many years ago by a programmer named David Heinemeier Hansson who started a company called 37signals in the course of creating their now well-used project management software Basecamp.

Whew!

Why does it matter? Well, in addition to creating Basecamp and the soft spot we have all developed for Ruby on Rails, 37signals also created a wonderful customer relationship manager (CRM) called Highrise. Highrise is a super simple CRM that competes with bigger, more complex platforms. We have been Highrise users since the day we opened our doors, and all of you have been the recipients of the wonderful support that can be largely attributed to how we use Highrise.

We highly recommend the application, and would urge any of you out there with small businesses to use the tool. That said, 37Signals, which has subsequently changed their name to Basecamp, announced a few months back that they were going to sell or spinoff Highrise. And after months and months of waiting on baited breath to find out exactly what was going to happen to our beloved CRM, we have just been given word that Basecamp has decided to spin it off instead of selling it.

So while it's a little unusual, we are all breathing such a sigh of relief we wanted to just write a little post to Highrise, its new CEO - Nathan Kontny, and the rest of the Basecamp team. Thank you for all you've done, and here's to many more years of making customers very very happy!

Hi DIYers, today we're going to tell you about who just got their 1,000th subscriber. We did!

As many of you know, YouTube is one of the most common ways that you have all learned about Alarm Grid. We have put hours and hours into producing wonderful, (boring but...) informative videos all about how to install a security system, program sensors, and even the occasional full panel swap-out.

Our very own Sterling Donnelly has become a little bit of a celebrity around these parts we're proud to say. Every day new users call in, in disbelief that he still answers the phones. It's no wonder considering that just under 300,000 people over the course of the last two years have seen him do all sorts of security system-based things (think of one person you know whose been seen so many times). In a few months, we'll have passed more than 1 million minutes watched on the Alarm Grid YouTube channel - believe it or not. That's 694 days worth of watching which, incidentally, is more days than Sterling has been married.

We can't believe we've hit 1,000 subscribers, and we're baffled by the amount of time that is spent on the channel. So keep on watching, and we'll keep on making the videos. We're diligently working on a studio to make them even better. Once the Alarm Grid lab is complete, you can expect more videos on the regular. So if you haven't subscribed already, head on over to the Alarm Grid YouTube channel and hit do it now!

10 years ago Yelp was founded. One of the earliest players on the Web 2.0 scene, Yelp was a bit of a revolutionary concept. Users would get online and tell other users what they thought of a company. Ten years later, the idea doesn't sound very absurd - it's just sort of something that happens everyday.

Why mention it in a post about Alarm Grid's birthday?

Well, 10 years after Yelp's launch, I think it's hard to disconnect Alarm Grid's business model from the incredible online revolution that Yelp began. Yelp is not our favorite review site. They make it hard for our users to write reviews that show up. If you see our Yelp page, you'll notice that 33 users have had reviews filtered. We have two reviews that have stuck. Not to mention Yelp is regularly criticized for their practice of what appears to be a pay-to-play model. They regularly call businesses asking them to advertise on the site, promising that the advertising will lead to more reviews (which are going to be filtered). The practice has led to lawsuits that Yelp basically always wins. After all, filtering your reviews, then calling you to tell you that paying them money to get more reviews is a good way to get reviews to stick sounds an awful lot like infamous mafia extortion attempts, "I'd hate to see your store burn to the ground. The evidence is on their side.

As the marketer on Alarm Grid's team, I can say with quite a bit of confidence, that while Yelp's reviews are filtered, and Yelp's pitch for advertisers to get on-board sounds extortion-y, their reviews are generally pretty trustworthy. And despite appearances, the accusations about their pay-to-play model are pretty unfounded. I've worked with companies that bought ads and companies that didn't. In both cases, reviews are hard to get to stick.

Yelp's review filter is a mean and ruthless God, albeit a fair one.

But that's not really why I'm writing this. Yelp's business model is their business. The reason I wanted to write about Yelp has more to do with the philosophy of Alarm Grid, and why we owe a lot of who we are these days to what Yelp did 10 years ago. The reason Yelp makes it hard for reviews to be included on pages is because the recognized how important those reviews were as a signal. For years, businesses were putting up fake reviews - a problem that persists to this day for almost every review site. While lots of businesses do their best to cheat the system. We are proud to say that we are able to trace back every single review we have been given to one or another customer of Alarm Grid's. Some of them were people who we helped set up a system, and others were random people who needed help with their system because their current company refused to do it, and who left us a review because they were so blown away with our service and attitude (and even a little impressed with the humble knowledge exhibited by the Alarm Grid staff).

Yelp started long before there were really any credible review sites online. I suppose you had Zagat back in the day. But they were independent. The idea that we could trust people to leave honest feedback, and more than that, that companies could trust in the intellect of their shoppers to sift through both lies and truth and make good purchasing decisions was novel. Nowadays, we take it for granted. A lot of companies still don't quite get it. Just last week the New York Post wrote an article about a New York hotel that charges their wedding guests $500 if someone in their party leaves a bad review. When the internet got wind of the practice, they stormed the bastille and left hundreds and hundreds of 1-star reviews on their Yelp page. It's not entirely fair. Many of these reviewers have never stayed at the hotel or experienced the service, but it speaks to the how sacred the right to review freely is taken by what we might go so far as to call the Yelp generation.

This is something we recognized at Alarm Grid early on. We believe very strongly in allowing the free voice of those whom have experienced our service to be heard loud and clear. Why? Because the entire goal of Alarm Grid was to be helpful and courteous and to help you do what you need to do to get your security system up and running. It's a model that can only exist in a world full of reviewers. First and foremost, we do our best to be and pass on competence. Occasionally, (as I'm sure some of you know) we make a mistake. When we do, we do our best to rectify the mistake and move past it. If you look at our reviews, I think you'll see that they reflect our service-centric corporate attitude. We believe that most of the people who come into contact with us will be so blown away with the level of service they receive, that over the long-term, it will be very difficult to find many people with a bad thing to say about us. We don't promise it won't ever happen - you can't please everybody - but we do try our darndest.

There are a lot of amazing milestones we've reached in the last two years. For one, we have built one of the fastest growing, most watched security system channels on YouTube. While the cynical may look at Justin Bieber's more than 2 million subscribers and laugh at our piddly numbers, we will proudly stand by our 1,000 subscribers. The channel itself has amassed more than 200,000 views since it's inception. More than 12,000 hours of footage have been watched by all of you during that time - that's more than 500 full days worth of time have been spent watching Alarm Grid. What does that mean? If you divide that into 8 hour workdays, more than 1500 days of work have been spent watching Alarm Grid's youtube videos. We count that as a huge success. Those views represent hundreds and thousands of people whose lives we have made better since we started this company. I can't even tell you how amazing that feels for us as a team.

Earlier this year, our Facebook page crossed the 2,000 likes threshold. Again, those aren't Justin Bieber numbers, but that's pretty incredible for something as boring as a security company. We're small, and our users are passionate, and we believe that our user base is the key to our success. As long as all of you are satisfied, we can continue to bring in new customers. More customers means we can grow our staff, more staff here means very simply, you get better service.

We have gone from being completely obscure to one of the most exciting brands in the DIY security industry. We are mentioned all over forums, blogs, and the occasional, surprising internet crevice. Every day, we as a team marvel in awe at this business that you have helped us build. Alarm Grid has become much bigger than any of us that work here, and any of you whom we monitor. In a lot of ways, other home security companies have followed suit - copying us move for move. We have been trendsetters, and we hope that all of you that took the risky plunge by allowing a security company that had been opened for less than 2 years understand how important you are to us.

We're really really proud to be celebrating our second year. Yelp has been building their company for 10 years, we have been building ours for 2. We're incredibly honored by the amazing customers that have given us the chance to serve them. And we're happy to say that we're ready to take on even more in the coming year. So tell your families and friends. Get them on board, let them know who we are. Don't keep us a secret. We believe that being treated well by your alarm company is a human right as important as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And besides, we want to make sure we make it through our terrible twos and right into our third anniversary.

Today we executed step 1 of building our new DIY video lab! We will be adding some heavy duty, locking casters to turn our faux wall into a mobile video lab. You say 'green screen' we say 'wall on wheels.' 

This means more nitty, gritty DIY installation videos using real sheetrock cut-ins. Who knows, we may even break out some cable snaking tricks that will save you time and aggravation. The beauty of the faux wall is that we can offer realistic installations on a true surface! 

As the Alarm Grid DIY community grows we plan to offer simple, professional techniques and solutions for all your alarm system needs. Be sure to check out our Youtube channel for the latest and greatest details on everything Honeywell! 

https://www.youtube.com/user/AlarmGrid

If you love Honeywell's wireless security systems as much as we do, then you will likely be very excited by all the new kits that we've posted. All of these systems are easily installed, for any DIYer. While most of the time, these units are installed on the wall as we showed how to do in our L7000 installation video as well as our older L5100 installation video (the L5100 is the same size as the L5200 and their to-the-wall installations would be exactly the same), for those still worried about the ease of installation there are ways to make it very very simple. For the L5200, there is a desk mount, and the L7000, we are told, will have one out very soon.

It's also worth noting that because the traditional Honeywell model has always been to distribute these systems through an installer, they have generally assumed that the installer would have a giant spool of wire when performing the installation. As a result, there is no cable between the transformer and the system itself. This can be easily fixed with the addition of the LT-Cable to any system. That said, let's take a little tour through the numerous kits that are available for the new LYNX Touch wireless security alarm systems.

Finally, don't forget that these systes can all be turned into home automation controllers using the L5100-ZWAVE module which can be installed on the left-most edge connctor.

Dual Path Kits

Dual path security systems are generally considered the most secure system you can buy. An often cited problem of the older security systems is that they were connected to phone lines which were susceptible to being cut by the most resourceful thieves. Nowadays the systems can be connected by much safer means, such as over IP or the wireless cellular networks. The problem with IP, however, is that the pathway is susceptible to the same problems that the old phone lines had - WIFI can be cut if a thief is determined enough. Cellular security systems, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to disrupt. Generally it takes an emergency of epic proportions to make security systems go down. A dual path security system allows a system owner to take advantage of the up-time of a cellular network, but in the rare case that that network went down, the WIFI pathway is there to back it up. Likewise, while WIFI is generally very reliable, the cellular system will ensure that uptime is something close to 99.9%. The only disadvantage is that monitoring a system with the cellular security pathway is going to cost a little bit more each month.

Generally, for those concerned with the added security who want to take advantage of 4G communication, we recommend also using the IP pathway since it costs no more to add save for the fixed cost of the communicator itself.

There are two L5200 kits that are now available with both the L5100-WIFI communicator and the new 4GL communicator. They are named L5200PK-WIFI-4G and L5200PK10-WIFI-4G. The only difference is that one comes with three 5811 wireless door and window sensors, and the other comes with 10.

Likewise, the L7000 has the L7000PK-WIFI-4G and the L7000PK10-WIFI-4G. Like the L5200's kits, the only difference between these two kits is the number of sensors. Then again, I'll stop mentioning that since in every kit set, there is a 3-sensor version and a 10-sensor version. And since this is a blog about security systems, I'll do my best to make it less boring than it already is. :)

Kits with ONLY the 4G Communicators

As with the dual path kits, these kits can take advantage of the security available to users of the 4G, cellular networks. 

These kits are the L5200PK-4G and the L5200PK10-4G. With only one communicator, they are a bit cheaper than the dual path kits. Their use of cellular makes them incredibly secure, though they lack the redundancy of kits that contain the IP communicator. If you are trying to save a little money but also want the most security you can get out of your system, consider these systems. Because the LYNX Touch series is modular, you can easily upgrade the system to be dual path later.

The L7000PK-4G and the L7000PK10-4G are wonderful systems that take advantage of the L7000's capacity for numerous zones and larger screen interface. For anyone who needs a great system that can be expanded with numerous Total Connect cameras, or tons of sensors, these L7000 security system kits are the perfect place to start.

Kits with ONLY the WIFI Communicators

While not quite as secure as the GSM pathway, monitoring a system by IP communicator is adequate for most homeowners. With the L5200 and the L7000 security systems, the iLP5 is available for those interested in hardwiring the system to a router. But with wireless where it is today, the L5100-WIFI allows a system to reliably connect to a local WIFI network.

The L5200PK-WIFI and the L5200PK10-WIFI use the WIFI pathway for communicating with a central station. This Total Connect 2.0 capable system's monitoring is included as the base package for all of our available systems.

These L7000 kits are the L7000PK-WIFI and the L7000PK10-WIFI. Using the IP connectivity for the L7000 will give it the ability to use Total Connect 2.0, which will allow an user to arm and disarm from anywhere in the world. While all the communicators will allow this, the L5100-WIFI is the most economical way to build a system capable of using the interactive options.

Kits With No Communicators

If you're looking for a kit with no communicators, just to use as a local sounder, or because you are replacing an old L5100 and are just planning on using the communicators you already have (since the GSMVLP5-4G works with the L5200). Alarm Grid has three kits with the L5200 security system available. these kits are named the L5200PK, the L5200PK-5811, and the L5200PK10. Each comes with a Honeywell L5200 security system and the various sensors depicted in the units' picture.

For those who want a little bit more system, Alarm Grid's L7000 kits can also be purchased without a communicator. If you are looking to upgrade from an older system, it's important to note that the GSMVLP5-4G does not work with the L7000. In order to take advantage of cellular communication with the L7000, you must install a 4GL communicator, in which case one of the cellular security systems listed above is probably the better option.

The new Honeywell 4GL communicator released from Honeywell is an updated 4G communicator made specifically for the Honeywell L7000 security system. To date, Honeywell's GSMVLP5-4G has been the cellular communicator for the LYNX Touch units. And while the GSMVLP5-4G will work inside of the L5200 security system, that older communicator will not work int he new, bigger L7000 systems.

Because the 4GL works for both the L7000 and the L5200 we will be shipping it with all kits for both units as soon as our supply of GSMVLP5-4Gs is exhausted. In the meantime, the L5200 kits will come with the older communicator.

If you have the older Honeywell L5100, the GSMVLP5-4G isn't going away any time soon. So if you are interested in upgrading your system to take advantage of all that the cellular communication pathway has to offer, you will be able to do that for the foreseeable future as. Just make sure to get the right communicator for your system.

It's no secret that the Home Security industry is full of companies willing to say anything to get you to sign a multi-year contract with them. It's one of the many problematic practices that resulted in the founding of Alarm Grid. It's a practice that nearly every single member of the industry does. When we started Alarm Grid two years ago, and we mentioned that we were going to try this whole thing by treating customers well and not making them sign contracts, we were laughed out of rooms and told that it would never work. Well, here we are two years later: one of the fastest growing security companies in the United States.

The industry incumbents aren't any better, unfortunately. Over the last year, we've seen tons of home security scams where companies are claiming to be ADT or another known security brand and tricking customers into signing up. Rightly, most of the brands whose names are being misrepresented are working hard to make sure that those companies are squelched. That said, if ADT thinks that tricking customers is such a bad idea, then why is it that they were just found reprimanded by the FTC for misrepresenting their advertisements by paying for spokespeople to discuss their product glowingly?

In the FTC's release, they wrote the following:

As part of its ongoing crackdown on misleading endorsements in advertising, the Federal Trade Commission has charged the home security company ADT LLC with misrepresenting that paid endorsements from safety and technology experts were independent reviews. Under an agreed-upon settlement, ADT is prohibited from misrepresenting paid endorsements as independent reviews in the future....

“It’s hard for consumers to make good buying decisions when they think they’re getting independent expert advice as part of an impartial news segment and have no way of knowing they are actually watching a sales pitch,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “When a paid endorser appears in a news or talk show segment with the host of that program, the relationship with the advertiser must be clearly disclosed."

While we find the practice of undisclosed paid endorsements reprehensible - especially when these endorsement deals are hundreds of thousands of dollars - it's unfortunately commonplace in this industry. You don't have to look too far online to find a company or two that always shows up at the top of what looks like a legitimate resource for consumers doing research on systems.

We find it odd that companies like ADT who go far to try to keep other companies from dragging their name through the mud (they offered $20,000 bounties for footage of companies training their employees to do what we described at the beginning of the article), would turn around and disrespect consumers in the same way. 

You will never find Alarm Grid faking reviews. Every Alarm Grid review online is 100% real. It is common for us to ask customers to leave those reviews, but they do it without any compensation. Our on-site testimonials, as we've stated numerous times before, are given to us in exchange for a free month of monitoring, but only after a client has worked with us for at least 6 months. But that's it. If you find our name on a blog, or on some rating site, we will very clearly disclose if we paid for it to be there - you have our word.