Alarm verification - Experience? Recommendations?

[JNA]

I am about to replace an old alarm system and want to upgrade it. One specific desire is to implement alarm verification, which the old alarm system never had. I live in an area where for the police to now respond to an alarm requires either a person in situ confirming an event, a person such as the home owner remotely observing an intruder and notifying police or an audio or video confirmation by the alarm monitoring company who then notify authorities of a confirmed alarm.
 
My current thinking is as follows:

1. I cannot rely on a neighbor or passer-by reporting, so alarm confirmation comes down to audio and/or video feedback of an alarm.
2. It is not practical to rely on me receiving notification of the alarm by phone, then viewing video clips from a camera system I install and then contacting the police department. There are just too many ways for this to fail and/or take too long to be practical. I do plan to have cameras I can use to remotely observe and log video events, just not rely on me monitoring them for alarm confirmation.
3. Audio only confirmation doesn't seem to be a very robust method, whether that is just hoping to hear noises of entry/movement or relying on glass break detection, so this leaves video confirmation.

I've done a little research and it seems that video confirmation either requires a camera tied directly into the alarm system or independent of the alarm system and using a service such as I-View Now (website at i-viewnow dot com). For example Honeywell Total Connect seems to support I-View Now so presumably resellers of Honeywell services could offer this capability? The advantage of I-View Now seems to be a potential choice of IP camera vendor and keeping cameras physically separate from the alarm system. Thoughts?
 
For reference I will likely replace my current alarm system with a Honeywell Vista system (more of that in a separate thread) but to keep this thread of more general interest and in order to not exclude potentially more desirable options please assume any DIY solution is on the table at this time.
 
Thanks
John

 

[pete_c]

Welcome to Cocoontech John!
 
Many folks here utilize the Leviton Omni Panel / Elk combo security and automation panels.
 
And many folks here have DIY'd their security pieces and do an a la carte subscription to a CS company.
 
These days too you have management of copper or copper going away and the switch over to cellular monitoring and using VOIP lines and the Internet transport to your home.   Major changes are coming.  I mean now your ISP can sell you alarm services that only utilize a not always up Internet connection with no guarantee of 100% uptime.
 
Here utilize NextAlarm (many years now).  It does have a video service.  For years now they would do a call tree list (used family/neighbors here).
 
Lastly with no answer then the local police station call.
 
I did personally register the house and contact information with the town and would sometimes call to mention that we would be out of town.
 
Over a 10 year period did have two false alarms.  One at 3 AM on a weekend while we were not there.  The police did come and did a visual around the entire home which I saw on the CCTV cameras.  The trigger was a ceiling mounted PIR in the middle of the kitchen nook.   I never did figure out what tripped the alarm.  Another time I had a false position was one afternoon while no one was in the house and thinking it was due to the sun hitting one PIR from a side door panel. (maybe).
 
Here while the CCTV can be seen with my Leviton panel and is sort of integrated what is used with CS monitoring is the old basics and it works fine.
 
I overdo it here a bit with the CS calling and configured to send me texts and emails.  The software here does the same and attaches a link to a video or stills embedded in the media text.  A bit over kill and I typically compare the timeframes and just about every time they are the same.
 
I am just mentioning here what I do (almost 10 years now) and with what company (NextAlarm).   I do not work for them and just a tinkerer by nature here.
 
Things are changing such that there will probably be a town service charge whether it is an issue or a false positive.

 

[JNA]

Thanks for the welcome Pete and your background of experience.
 
I've been lurking on the site and procrastinating for some time. The main reason to move ahead with a new system now is my change from a POTS based alarm to a dual IP and cell service based communications system because I am updating from painfully slow 3mbps download speed DSL to 55mbps cable internet. I don't want to continue to pay the high costs to support POTS for the alarm only, which anyway has always been vulnerable to being unplugged at the NID box on the outside of the house. Cable is also vulnerable to being unplugged at the street pedestal, so 4G cellular will be backup if the ne'er do wells are smart enough to unplug the cable.
 
When my alarm was originally installed the police would respond to an alarm company call but the very large number of false alarms (and associated cost) forced them to implement the requirement for alarm confirmation. I suspect this will become an increasingly common requirement by local police authorities. They already had the discretion to charge frequent offenders for false alarms but probably decided it made more sense to go with alarm confirmation given relatively low level of crime in my area. I can't argue with that. Ever since they implemented this requirement I have continued to pay for monitored service, knowing that if I had a genuine alarm then there would be a very good chance that the police would not respond. In reality the front yard sign along with residing in a relatively safe area has probably had more to do than anything with having no events, but I'd rather not continue to rely on that. Hence why I am now at the stage of investigating what it takes to have a company access video for confirmation in order to implement a more robust level of security.

 

[pete_c]

Yes; here see the option of video monitoring on the CS website monitoring page but never have looked.
 
Relating to video just call and ask. 
 
Personally my best deterrent after hours is to light up the exterior and peripheral of the home making it day light.
 
Outdoor security cams here are placed from the house out and from the edge of the property in.  Every camera sees another camera.
 
That and the most activity in the middle of the morning has been coyotes (in the midwest) and rabbits playing.
 
Take you time...you will input here from other forum users that have done or are doing what you are doing today.
 
Commercially here a few years back settled on Tyco after looking for a nationwide multiple office location company. Wanted one contract for all of the locations.

 

[JNA]

An update that might be of some interest to folks.
 
In relatively limited inquiries I haven't yet found an alarm monitoring company that is selling a Vista/Total Connect based video verification solution direct to consumers. However there is some hope given Honeywell seem to be committed to this https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2017/02/honeywell-adds-video-alarm-verification-to-key-connected-building-offerings
 
The closest so far is Videofied monitoring from GeoARM which is based on Videofied hardware. Videofied do have an app note about tying their wireless sensors into third party panels https://www.videofied.com/us/en/concept/upgrades_with_videofied/ so it seems a hybrid solution might be possible. Not sure if this would require two separate WAN connections though, one from the Videofied hardware and one from the Vista panel and I don't know if any service companies support this solution. Honeywell have owned Videofied for a bit over a year so who knows what they'll do with it, integrate it or just leave it as a standalone solution but according to their PR they did so for video verification purposes https://www.honeywell.com/newsroom/news/2016/03/honeywell-acquires-rsi-video-technologies
 
Of general interest, Videofied do have some fairly well articulated arguments for video verification https://www.videofied.com/us/en/concept/the_benefits_of_videofied/ and also seem to take seriously the wireless communications between sensors and the panel by implementing both spread spectrum and encryption https://www.videofied.com/us/en/concept/secure_wireless_communication/ Since they are/were headquartered in France I assume their system has probably been engineered to address the better class/more sophisticated Euro burglar.

 

[Del91574]

I wouldn't make the statement that Videofied is only available from a single vendor, because that is not the case.
 
The app note shows that both systems stand on their own, the integration is trivial, meaning the host panel provides an output that would tell the verification when the system is armed/disarmed and when an alarm occurs, however the videofied product is always functional regardless of the state of the host system.
 
The engineering portion isn't to address the burglar, but the video laws in place in the EU.....much more stringent requirements (IE privacy masking is mandatory for many installations. Spoke a lot with the Axis reps about this)

 

[JNA]

Sorry if I misled anyone. I didn't mean to imply that Videofied was only available from one-direct-to-consumer alarm monitoring company, they were just the only ones I found offering Videofied in my quick survey. I should probably add that there are other services that offer similar video confirmation, such as Alarm.com. I should also be clear that video verification may be commonplace in commercially available turn key systems, it just doesn't seem to be that common in monitoring services sold direct to consumers who already have their own hardware ... but if folks know different then please post away, its why I asked the question in the original post!
 
DEL, thanks for clarifying the integration of Videofied and third party panel. It seemed relatively straightforward but I didn't want to state that given my lack of experience. Since the Videofied system has independent operation is it then correct that the system would require two cellular based services, one for Videofied and one for the host system as I speculated?
 
With respect to the "engineering portion", i.e spread spectrum and encryption, aren't you and the Axis reps essentially confirming that a fixed frequency non-encrypted wireless band is not considered secure enough for video and so by default not very secure for alarm monitoring either?

 

[Del91574]

You would need 2 cellular services as best as I know. Granted Videofied uses Telular as their provider, I don't see any way that you could connect to the unit to send to a CS.
 
I wouldn't say encryption and spread spectrum is the issue, neither is Axis. There's a whole process to harden Axis cameras on a network and lock them down. The main reason I see that they are using different engineering practices would be due to the EU laws and usage of CCTV. Far easier to fix the gate before the horse is out of it. Keep in mind Videofied is a unique product and solution, so that would be why I'd see them securing their product more than a true CCTV camera.