All,

My mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly last night.

She lived in farm country and has very few neighbors that are a distance away.

As of right now, her house is unsecured (door locks only) and we are fearful that estranged family members may attempt to remove items from the home.

I need an alarm system quick, but something good.

The house gets good cell reception and the house is equipped with ISDN and wifi.

Which is the better product? SimpliSafe or Ring Alarm?

Reviews online are proving to be unhelpful...

Your help is appreciated.

Condolences to your family.

Since you're in a time crunch, my suggestion would be to go with SimpliSafe since it is a more "mature" system. It's been around longer than the Ring Alarm System.

That said, as long as you have good cell coverage and a good wireless setup in the house, either should work well.

Steve...

Thanks. SimpliSafe is available at Sam's club and I could have 1 in hand today, but if the Ring is measurably better, I could wait a day or 2 for Amazon to deliver.

I would need more sensors for the SimpliSafe than what it comes with as a package from Sam's, so it would not be 100% out of the box.

The house is now my Wife's (deed was TOD) and we plan on keeping it for a while. So, the system will be there and protecting the house for a while.

If anyone else has any direct knowledge of either of these systems, then I would appreciate your thoughts.

My friend has simplisafe for he vet office & it has worked well for a couple of years.
No experience with ring.

My brother has SimplySafe and he loves it.

I have Ring doorbell, different product line altogether but hate it. Not impressed with Ring huge delays in notifications.

Probably should consider a camera system as well with upload to the cloud. "friendly" intruders will be more concerned with video evidence that is stored off site.

I have two family members using SimpliSafe and they are generally happy. One is not set up right, but it was due to user error.

If you need more components, you can buy those of course. But check to see if you can just buy two complete systems as - IMO - you'll want to have two keypads. Maybe that will get you the components you need at a lower price. Just check with SimpliSafe about that approach.

Keypads - We installed a hard-wired system in our house. We use it all the time and all is good. When we first had it installed, we put the keypad at the main entrance we use for the house. Made sense.

Until the alarm went off at 2 a.m. and we had no clue as to why. Moving from the bedroom to the keypad to find out what the heck was happening - not ideal at all - convinced us to put an additional keypad in the master bedroom as we could see what is happening without going through the house.

(The alarm was set up to go off full blast if it lost the phone connection... ugh. Figured out how to change that just to a beep.)

Nephew has Simplisafe. It’s currently just set up with motion detection, which works well in his small house.

The alarm is really loud, but I doubt neighbors more than a couple hundred yards away will hear/pay attention to it. I’d consider not hooking up the siren. I’d go with several motion activated cameras instead. The likelihood of the siren going off resulting in the capture of miscreants in your situation seems low.

All...

Thanks. I will be using the SimpliSafe System.

I am a traditional hardwire security guy. My homes always have a hard-wired system in them, so this is new to me. I am pretty tech savvy, so I am not afraid of the wireless stuff, I just like copper.

I will look to see if purchasing 2 systems from Sam's make sense. The system I am getting comes with 1 camera, 6 contacts, 1 keypad, 1 base station, 2 motions, and a keyfob. I need more window/door contacts (16 I think) and/or additional motions. I will do the math to see what the better deal is.

Thanks for all your help...

PS - We can grab some ARLO cameras from Sam's too. I have used these a couple of times and for wireless, they seem okay.

quote:

Originally posted by straightshooter01:
Probably should consider a camera system as well with upload to the cloud. "friendly" intruders will be more concerned with video evidence that is stored off site.

This also avoids having to try to set a sensor at every possible point of entry. With video you'll know they are there when they trigger camera and can call the sheriff, call them, chat them up over the camera and tell them you have them on video AND have called the sheriff, etc.

Just a quick question/consideration.

You say the house is set with ISDN for internet access?

The required upload speed is 1.5 MBPS for each camera on the system.

Have you done a speed check on the internet at the house?

https://simplisafe.com/forum/c...download-upload-spee

If I'm not mistaken, my simplisafe camera has a speaker. When I access my camera from my phone, it has a microphone icon and I think I can actually talk through the camera. I've never tried it, but I thought it was interesting. When I click the microphone, it says "hold microphone to speak, release to listen."

I can hear what's going on in the house with my simplisafe cameras. I've had my system for 2 years now.

Tony.

I am not sure what the upload speed is. The house is serviced by CenturyLink. It just so happens that my wife has been an analyst for CenturyLink for 20 years. She will know what the upload is...

If camera's don't pan out, then so be it. What she has speed wise is all that is available for where she is.

Going to remote in now to see if I can run a speed test...

Well... Using TeamViewer to run a speed test (I know that will impact the speeds significantly), her download is about 3 Mbps. Her upload was about 1.

Camera's may be out.

I will see if the service can be turned-up or if that is the max (I think it is the max).

Not to belabor the obvious, but make sure there are good locks and change the keyways.

I use Simplisafe. Two cameras so far. Change locks.

quote:

As of right now, her house is unsecured (door locks only) and we are fearful that estranged family members may attempt to remove items from the home.

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It seems you have decided on a security system. You must now explore other avenues to ensure that items are safe. I am hoping the estranged family members are not criminals and as such may respond to strong suggestions that removal of items will result in serious consequences.

I had simply safe and switched over to ring. Simply safe only has indoor cameras and charges a higher monitoring fee for the camera. Ring has both inside and outside and the monitoring covers a warranty on all ring products.

Thanks all...

I have the SimpliSafe system in hand and will be installing it tomorrow.

I already have 2 ARLO cameras up, one on the interior and 1 watching the front entrance/driveway.

The locksmith will be there tomorrow installing new locks and adding deadbolts. There will also be some reinforcing of the door jamb.

There are not a lot of valuables in the house and I will be removing what little is there. But, I believe someone may want to make entry to see what is left and will take just about anything they can.

This was a respected family that had a successful farm until my wife's father passed away a couple of years ago. Local PD know the house and the heirs. They will also be keeping an eye out.

Please keep us posted as to results.

I will say in defense of Ring, I've had the video doorbell for almost 3-1/2yrs now and as for lag. I get a video notification before the front door even opens up completely. I get all motion notifications as to any approach at 10-15' out from the front door day/night. I've spoken to people at my front door from my car video-two way from 20 mi away from home.

I even had a home contractor (unrelated) tell me that he had a two way conversation while he was in London from a Ring notification.

So, while mileages may vary, much like Apple/Android devices, many folks have different experiences with products. Mine with Ring, both product and customer support have been stellar. I'm homebound these days and purchased it so I could answer the door and/or receive motion notifications on my phone both video/audio while I'm in my room. I can activate Live View from my phone anytime and view my front door camera. On another note, even using bluetooth headphones out on the pool deck I was able to get motion and two-way with the headsets. Maybe I live in a vortex or something but my product does exactly what it's described to do, without wifi interruption and I've never had delays like mentioned. The videos have also saved me money on an item that the USPS marked as Delivered but my video shows the delivery time/day stamp completely different than the Delivered Notification and the video clearly showed the postman just had regular mail in hand to my box, no package at all. After seeing the video the company reimbursed me for the product and sent another one free.

SimpliSafe may work great for you, I hope it does for your circumstances, and otherwise good advice here, but in my experience Ring has worked perfectly for me. In fact, the recently upgraded my video doorbell for the newer video doorbell 2 for $20 with an exchange of sending my old one back. They even sent the doorbell 2 to my home before I even removed the old one to send back in exchange.