Elk M1G Cellular....

[jmed999]

I recently installed and Elk M1G and I'm not yet using a call center to monitor my system but would like to. I was thinking about going with the $8.95/mth service advertised at Home Security Store. I do not have a land line. My wife and I use Verizon for our Droids.

What is the best way to access the call center from the Elk during an alarm? I heard we could use the Uplink 2500 http://www.homesecuritystore.com/p-1452-model-2500-uplink-model-2500-universal-gsm-alarm-communicator.aspx and a Verizon prepaid card. Is this correct?

What's the best and cheapest way to do this?

Thanks for your help!

 

[tmbrown97]

I'd talk to AlarmRelay and tell them you want cellular; they have an option where you don't provide your SIM - they handle the cellular aspect as part of your monthly fee with them.

 

[jmed999]

I'd talk to AlarmRelay and tell them you want cellular; they have an option where you don't provide your SIM - they handle the cellular aspect as part of your monthly fee with them.

Thanks for the reply! That is more expensive per month....a lot more than $8.95. I think there is a way to use the uplink 2500 and still get the $8.95/mth price. I may be able to get the uplink fr $50 on ebay and save $25/mth.

 

[Del91574]

I don't believe the Uplink has a SIM that can be swapped out, just a regular IMEI hard coded.

 

[RobNJ]

I have alarm relay (actually called watchlight). $8.95/mo and I got a SIM off amazon for like $2.00 with shipping. I installed it in a HAI C3. Working just fine.
Just dont let them charge you a backup line setup fee if you plan on using a landline as well. The C3 acts just like a regular land line when it needs to call out. To them there is zero difference other then a differnet number calling them. I had this argument with them already and got the fee waived.

 

[Del91574]

To play devil's advocate, you need to know that a C3 is a far different animal compared to a dedicated cell communicator....the C3 has 0 supervision and is only marginally different from a POTS line, so with the "bring your own SIM" route, even prepaid, it's very possible for an end user to forget to pay or "reload" their SIM and be none the wiser.

There are also some cell carriers that don't seem to work properly with the C3 in all circumstances as they hear the DTMF "send" and "end" at the CS which can equate to a garbage attempt by the CS receiver and step on the panel's communication data.

 

[jmed999]

Since I don't have a land line I need to use cell service to call Alarm Relay. How can I do this and keep it at $8.95/month? Thanks!

 

[apostolakisl]

Since I don't have a land line I need to use cell service to call Alarm Relay. How can I do this and keep it at $8.95/month? Thanks!

The C3 works perfectly with Alarm Relay and is the standard price. Of course, you have to pay for the cell service. I have the Elk, C3, and Alarm Relay for 3 years now with great success. T-mobile and ATT are the only two national carriers that work with the C3 unit. I have found that ATT is the best deal when purchased $100 at a time giving you 1 year of service. If you purchase at the kiosk you save a few bucks since the final price is $100, not $100 plus tax (actually only give you like $93 worth of minutes). The number of minutes you get with $100 is way more than you need (like 5 to 10 times as many as you need).

C3 is also nice in that it will allow you to phone into your Elk panel and use the touch tone commands as well as providing the Elk a route to call you and announce voice messages as per any rules you wrote. The other style of cellular units don't do that.

There is no supervision. Of course, I never understood how supervising your comm is of any value. If your not home it has no way to notify you, and if you are home, what are you going to do about it anyway. If it is down as a result of cell service being out, Elk won't know it unless it tries to call out. And since cell service going down is completely out of your control, then I don't see a whole lot of value. It's not like you can go fix it. If the C3 itself fails, the Elk will alert you the same as if you lose dial tone with a POTS line. This, of course, is important since you can (and will need to) go fix it.

As far as forgetting to pay for the minutes. ATT gives you many an email reminder. And I believe you can do auto-pay. It is no different than failing to pay your Alarm Relay bill. I guess you get two shots at screwing up instead of just one.

 

[Del91574]

Lou, it's not a matter of supervising your service, although that's part of the equation. The larger issue is there's no supervision for the power and battery on the unit. If you can't see the value in supervising your cell unit, then I can't help your understanding. There may not be a solution to fix the cell that's do-able remotely, but at least you would know of the issue.

In the case of the 2500, or even with AES, with the serial connection, there's rules that can be used in addition to inputs and outputs configured via rules. Many times on cell primary accounts I'll drive rules that will still feed in signals via POTS/VOIP (not ideal) or TCP/IP, assuming you know the CS' port information, but that's dependent on how the Uplink is porting it's data to the CS. I'm usually doing this for a few purposes, first is notification locally there's an issue with the cell communicator and second to still send a signal (if possible) to the CS. The other supervision signals fall in from there. It may not be a direct fallover like a DACT and there may be some delay, but with the hardware, it's about as good as you're going to get for a backup.

You're never going to get close to the $9/month for any form of non-POTS communications route no matter who the vendor is, either you're paying up front for the CS and cell service or you're buying your own minutes to cover a SIM. Both the Uplink and the C3 are "invisible" as far as the CS goes, depending on how the Uplink's data is ported in, either via emulation or direct via TCP/IP, the only difference is what you're paying for cellular and to whom. You need to consider which is more important, supervision of the unit or being able to buy your own minutes and phone remote control and voice messages.

 

[apostolakisl]

Dell,

You are wrong.

If the power fails to the unit (both battery and AC go down) Elk gives you a phone fault.

And of course you can separately supervising the power to the unit simply by using a supervised 12vdc power source instead of the wall wart.

You keep getting hung up on the built in battery on the unit and that you can't supervise it. Remember, the unit you install has no battery at all. So removing the C3's battery downgrades it to the same status as the units you are installing.

 

[Del91574]

Lou,
I can't make you see the large operational and functional differences between the units, which is fine. If you choose a product based strictly on economic factors and the ability to DIY and strictly control it without a "thrid party" entity, so be it. You chose the C3 as suitable for your purposes, which may or may not have been a truly informed decision based on percieved value vs. risk or return on investment.

I'll assume that since you're not in the trade, you don't have access or have really seen the real programming and functions contained on the units I deal with, Uplink, Telguard, AES, Conn24 and Alarmnet. All of them have provisions for supervising power, communications and multiple other items independent of the host panel's connection. The host panel really only supervises it's connection to the unit and gets a output from the cell to notify the end user of any potential issues, that's it. All the other supervisiories are directed to the central station to be acted upon, because as you put it, what are you going to do if X is down/fails/what have you....but then again, with a C3 itself, you know none of that and then to do such, you need to homebrew your own solution (hack, if you will) for items that can be supervised by means within your control. Personally, I'd rather have the CS inform Mr. Jones that they're having communication issues or a low battery in their cell rather than discovering such from a keypad beeping or display.

The item that you're missing or is getting lost in your translation is the monitoring aspect and really how much should be supervised and monitored. We're not talking big brother or being unreasonable. Sure, you can't fix a cell tower or battery/AC loss, etc. remotely, but at least the central station is informing you of an issue prior to it becoming a mission critical failure, or at least informing you that it is a mission critical failure that should be addressed ASAP. I got many of those calls with the last hurricane and storm that went through, affecting upwards of 30% of every cell tower in the NE United States.

The C3 is a glamourized cell phone...that's all. You have no way of knowing anything about it's functionality until it's too late. Period. As long as it's putting voltage out on the simulated telephone lines, the connected panel is going to remain happy.When does the C3 test itself, the power supply, the battery, the comms route? How is the C3 able to report anything other than what the panel detects and is able to report, assuming that it's still connected to the panel?

In the specific case of the 2500, I install a separate power supply to meet the 2.5A output that is needed, not the host panel, and when you source the separate power supply, wouldn't it be irresponsible to install a power supply that doesn't have AC and DC supervision connections as well as battery supervision, let alone not connect those to the host panel? Wouldn't it be just as irresponsible to not enable reporting of all the internal supervisiories the unit can transmit?

Simply put, the C3 may do 70% of what a real communicator does, but the fact remains that the 30% of what it does not do is very significant, no matter how much you choose to discount them.

 

[apostolakisl]

In the specific case of the 2500, I install a separate power supply to meet the 2.5A output that is needed, not the host panel, and when you source the separate power supply, wouldn't it be irresponsible to install a power supply that doesn't have AC and DC supervision connections as well as battery supervision, let alone not connect those to the host panel? Wouldn't it be just as irresponsible to not enable reporting of all the internal supervisiories the unit can transmit?

Which is precisely what you would do with the C3 if you wanted to supervise the power supply. It's the owners choice. Many folks(like me) with lots of goodies added onto the system will already have a supervised aux power supply that the C3 or Uplink or whatever plugs into.

I grant you that the central station and the security panel would only be aware of a cell tower signal issue if a test call failed to go through which is inferior to the uplink style where central station is aware of a failed comm essentially instantly. There are clearly times where you might want to know this. But mostly they would be commercial, not residential. Mostly they would involve sending human resources to the location to do what the security panel/CS had been doing automatically.

The C3 is a residential unit where most people are going to take no action if the tower comm fails. And the C3 offers a number of features that the uplink doesn't that a residential customer would appreciate, like the Elk voice calling you or you calling in and using the touch tone control functions on the Elk.

My final point is this:
Both types of systems have their place and neither can be ruled inferior without first specifying the objectives of the user.

 

[Del91574]

The devil's in the details with the units.

Commercial or residential has no bearing in this, all my accounts that have CS monitoring and are not self performing, are supervised and the end user(s) are informed if there is an issue with their system, both on site and via the respective call lists.

I know I'd want to know that my comms route was down, had issues, etc. before something was needed so at least there could be inquiries or plans to restore service in an appropriate manner. That's how I know factually that at least 1/4 of all cell towers in the eastern seaboard are down or damaged after the hurricane and storm that just went through. It affects coverage and reliability of many of these sites in a major way. I've pulled RSSI's from these units and I can see what is going on with their coverage in snapshot form so at least the end users have an answer as to what's really going on. How many C3 owners out there in these areas know anything is wrong besides if and when their panel misses a test timer, assuming they programmed their system with one (how many systems are out there without test timers?)

Once you price out side by side and then figure in what it really takes to make a C3 "like" a regular cell, you're already past the cost of the regular cell itself with none of the related benefits until you start "hacking". In the case of the M1, you're either using the onboard serial or XSP, and adding a power supply. Cost wise, honestly, calling a spade a spade, the price monthly is the same, the only difference is what the CS charges for the account with Uplink vs. what you pay for the account and the SIM access charges.

The "pros" such as being able to dial in to the account for voice access/voice dial out and then being able to use wired phone lines as a "backup" service or similar...well, if those are selling points, more power to you, but to me, it's like hearing someone say "my I-whatever comes in green, I like green, that's why I bought it" but in the meanwhile, to get it to work with X and Y, you need to convert formats or it doesn't support the flashbang file, without being jailbroken but it's ok because I chose it because it came in green.

Without getting into hard numbers, the bring your own cell service costs twice as much as the wholesale cost for an account with Uplink. Retail, you're going to end up at the same cost, the rest is simply markup.

 

[apostolakisl]

So, you are on the east coast and a bunch of towers are down right now and a bunch of homeowners have lost comm.

CS tells you the comm is down. What are these people doing about it? And furthermore, don't you think these people know the cell service is down since their cell phones don't work either.

Cost isn't much different. You are looking at $18/mo total ATT plus Alarm Relay. I think you are at $25 or so for the other. Like $80/year cheaper for C3? I suppose it adds up.

Not having your system set up to do routine checks is not a valid argument. Failing to know how to check the right boxes when you do your system doesn't justify anything but calling yourself a failure, not your hardware. Alarm Relay as a routine course sets your system to do routine checks, you can specify the time interval or let them do their regular once/mo. I do once/week. No failures yet.

The power supply and supervised battery are costs with both systems, if you are so inclined to have that. So you can't just tack that cost onto the C3 cost and say it now costs more. Frequently it is irrelevant since many folks already have a supervised aux power/battery system which can still handle one more item.

But I don't think I get the "I bought it cause its green" comment. The two have very different functional components, it's not just superficial fluff. Elk didn't put voice notification and phone dial features because nobody wanted or had use of those features. If you want those features, you need a POTS line or a cellular POTS simulator. So if you don't have a POTS, and you want that feature and you get a C3, are you still going to get an Uplink to have the 24/7 link confirmation?

 

[chrisexv6]

Not trying to butt in, but I think another thing to be taken into account is the fact that there are only so many Uplink service providers. Whereas the HAI setup seems to be a lot easier for a DIY-er (aka a Cocooner) to hook their DIY alarm up to. Even the few Uplink providers Ive found on the web have very few reviews about their Uplink service.