I have Simplisafe. I am not happy.
1. Doorbell keypad does not operate on first key presses. It has to wake up. Keying the digits again might make the smartlock operate.
2. Outdoor camera battery does not stay charged with the solar panel, contrary to their claims. I must have a second battery, charged, on hand so that when the first battery goes out I can do the swap with one ladder excursion. The battery takes about eight hours to charge, by the way.
3. Smoke alarms sound false alarms.
4. Smartlock does not stay connected to the system. Routinely we get warnings that the system cannot communicate with the smartlock.
5. The system does not have good logic. The armed system is disarmed by the smartlock keypad. Maybe. Often the door will unlock, but the system will not disarm. So, you hear the lock open, rotate the knob, open the door, and bam…alarm sounds, and won’t stop until you enter the code on the master keypad. Makes no sense.
6. The cameras drop out, off the WiFi, when you really need them to work. An alarm was triggered, while I was at church. I checked the cameras. All four were dead. All four lost connection to WiFi. Not normal. So, I had no way to determine if the alarm was real. Police had to come.
7. And, the worst thing…if the alarm goes off, and you have to call the monitoring center, good luck. I was on hold for several minutes with the monitoring center trying to tell them that I was at home, the alarm was not valid, and to stop any emergency response. When they finally came on line, the police were pulling up. Recently they put in a “press one to cancel an alarm” feature in their calling center tree.

I routinely have to write them to ask for improvements. They just don’t care. Form letter responses.

I will one day study on name brand security companies to determine if I should change. Contracts are the biggest reason to avoid such companies in my view.

DIY alarm systems are only as good as the installer. Door, window, water sensors are relatively trivial, but if you add cameras and motion sensors to the mix, getting the angles right is the trick. It’s pretty easy to miss covering an area. If an area is missed and something happens, the installer “pays” for it, but not in a pleasant way.

Oh forgot something. Don’t neglect your network coverage. WiFi dead spots will make for blind spots in your alarm system.

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Question for the Simpli Safe People

do you have the Camera's? if so what do you think of the Set up and do they work well

They have worked very well for me. I have the doorbell camera and four of their indoor camera's. One of those I put there outdoor silicone wrap on and it is wired to outside over my garage doors and sees down my driveway. It gets a lot of wind noise on the sound side but the camera works well. The other three are inside watching the front door from the stairwell, kitchen door and side door. I had one that would occassionally drop but resynced it and it had been rock solid.