Wow, it's been a long time, but just want to thank everyone here who helped me narrow things down and especially steered me to an actual alarm system instead of just cameras.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the system. I've had the cops out twice.
First was I forgot that one of the neighbors had a key and she came over to check that things were locked up properly and the hurricane shutters were down and she triggered the alarm (and talked the cops out of doing anything somehow). The second was a totally phantom motion sensor trigger. I still need to poke around the settings and see if I can make it not go right to CALL THE COPS on one sensor trigger...
Pros:
- Pretty cheap! Both upfront and monitoring.
- Backup internet via built-in cell modem is a nice perk on the "pro" version or whatever they call it, and backup data is included in the monitoring fee.
- Big surprise with one of the outdoor stick-up cams - I bought the little solar panel and it works extremely well, every time I check the battery level it's 100% (of course this is Florida so...). If you had to do a bunch of outdoor cams and running cabling was an issue, the solar power option seems great.
- The phone app is not too bad, and kind of handy to have geofencing for auto-arm and such, or being able to disarm the alarm if you forget the keypad code.
- The picture quality on the cams I got for $30 is surprisingly good.
- I'm not there obviously, but so far I've not had any devices lock-up, freeze, etc. which might be less of a big deal if you live in the home, but if you have no way to remotely power-cycle an AC-powered camera, so I'm happy they've not gone wonky.
- WiFi coverage on the eero portion of the alarm base is really good.
Cons:
- Like I think most wireless systems, you can't have recordings going 24/7, but does that really matter if you're just trying to catch a face after someone is already in the house? Probably not.
- The double-stick tape supplied with the motion sensors seems a bit janky - even after cleaning the walls before sticking the motion sensors up I woke up one morning (day before I left) to a few of them triggered and laying on the ground. I re-mounted them with screws.
- Motion detection on the stick-up cams seems a little janky, and you can't exclude areas that are causing false alerts.
- WiFi for the cams works, but as many others have said on here, the compression is just nuts, so placement of the cameras is important - don't think you'll see a face from across the room or yard.
- Motion trigger delays on the cameras is kind of annoying - on the outside cams it's repeatedly missed faces when someone hangs a tag on the front door.
- If you're in an area with spotty cell coverage or your alarm base station is in a bad spot in your home, I worry that without local storage you might not get all your video up to the cloud...
Anyhow, thanks again everyone! Nice community you have here, wish I had more reason to hang out.
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