| First, I'm so sorry. We were broken into in October 2012. The big fear as we waited outside for the police to say we could enter (they dusted for prints) was that we'd lose photos of our kids. They took laptops, but not the backups. I now have offsite backups. Security is an antiquated industry. I went with Simplisafe.com. It's a self-installed system, it uses wireless over t-mobile to call home. It has a 24/7 call center monitoring the alarm and they do call 911 quickly. I know this bc we had a few false alarms after installing. Simplisafe has great service and there is no contract, but as a practical reality you don't have many choices in the space anyway. So yeah, you can cancel, but there's not too many places to go. You can also buy a brinks/ADT yard sign on eBay, since to my mind that's scarier than a startup most thieves haven't heard of. The only part of home security Simplisafe reinvents is the installation. I thought they were coming out with a networked fire alarm, but they're not moving to be a total home automation or internet of things play. You can't add third party hardware, like the Foscam or GE home automation stuff I have. I see why Simplisafe doesn't want to just support any HW, since the result of a false positive is their call center calling the police . I am not a fan of their motion sensors. That was the cause of both false alarms. It wasn't the cat, they later told us that the air mass coming out of forced air heating looks like a person. This is a big deal and I screamed at them for not disclosing this. The police where I live are very helpful, and we cried wolf twice. The first time, the neighbor unlocked the door and an officer entered our home gun drawn. That must've been incredibly tramautic for that officer. And of course we were fined twice. Hang in there. That first night, my family slept w/ the neighbors. I was at Home Depot and a man starting his late night shift cut a perfect piece of plywood for me. I used it to board up our broken door like you might before a hurricane. I was so grateful to have that help, to have the help of police, and neighbors. It was a temporary euphoria because, as you mention, you're going to be on guard for quit a while. |