Recommendations for Security System installation/monitoring?

Another recommendation for Lindon at Crimtech.

I got quotes from the others mentioned in this thread and really wasn’t happy with the salesman. With Lindon you talk straight to the installer about everything. He doesn’t put on any sales pitch at all and will provide exactly what you need/want.

A+ service.

Skidbladnir said :

A_Cog said :

Why bother with a private company?

So, your main risks are loss of power, loss of signal to your own phone & ability to contact secondary phones if yours I’d unavailable , local internet outage, remote polling to ensure you know when any one of the above happens, approriate diagnosis of which has occurred, and appropriate response to the error source, and wether or not your insurer will rate it as an acceptable system.

( Police taking you seriously is a secondary problem to the above, really)

Nup, wrong on all points buddy. Sounds like you’re making up reasons to be a doubter. Sensor has a back-up battery, loss of signal doesn’t matter coz you can have multiple callers (spouses/partners/flatmates), “local Internet outage” wtf? Canberra doesn’t have brown-outs. And yes, cops do respond.

Skidbladnir said :

A_Cog said :

Why bother with a private company?

So, your main risks are loss of power, loss of signal to your own phone & ability to contact secondary phones if yours I’d unavailable , local internet outage, remote polling to ensure you know when any one of the above happens, approriate diagnosis of which has occurred, and appropriate response to the error source, and wether or not your insurer will rate it as an acceptable system.

( Police taking you seriously is a secondary problem
to the above, really)

Also, those pesky large huntsman spiders can play havoc with sensors. Best to get rid of them! Hahaha! 😉

( also, technology has moved on a lot since I wrote the above posts and so have I, but much of it remains solid.)

Apologies in advance for an ignorant question, but why do you need a static ISP (IP address?) for the webcam?

A_Cog said :

Why bother with a private company?

So, your main risks are loss of power, loss of signal to your own phone & ability to contact secondary phones if yours I’d unavailable , local internet outage, remote polling to ensure you know when any one of the above happens, approriate diagnosis of which has occurred, and appropriate response to the error source, and wether or not your insurer will rate it as an acceptable system.

( Police taking you seriously is a secondary problem to the above, really)

Why bother with a private company?
If you have a smartphone, you can:
1. Get your Internet provider to give you a “static ISP” – cost is about $5/month
2. Buy a webcam and hook it up to your phone line – some are movement activated, and some come with two-way comms, so you can hear and speak -cost is around $100
3. Download the app for the camera – cost is free

Then, when some douche burglar breaks into your home, the camera calls your phone, you can see the aforementioned douche, record footage or stills, email them or call the cops and say “hey, little piggies, there is a douche robbing my house and he’s wearing X, Y and Z” and/or you can speak to the douche directly as he robs your house.

Plus, because you can control the camera, you can track him and see what he touches. If he doesn’t have gloves, you can tell the cops EXACTLY what to test for prints (usually they don’t bother coz they can’t be sure). Yay! Scratch one douchebag (until he gets let off for not getting hugged enough as a kid).

Some of Security 1’s “security cameras” do not work in shopping centres either Farout.

My wallet was stolen in a shopping centre, the company had the contract with the shopping centre, they were contacted and their response was that their security footage was unavailable due to their system crashing and wiping the footage.

Yet W’Worths held the best shots of one thief out of the three! 100% more helpful too.

Have noted since that their cameras are limited and facing the wrong way around the shopping centre.

Skidbladnir – that is excellent information. I wish you had been around when we put our system in. (If you have any other information re CCTV systems that you wanted to share that would be great too. There seem to be some increasingly cheap ones on the internet which we are considering.)

We opted for self monitoring to our own and trusted nearby phones. Our biggest issue was we trusted a sole operator newbie in the market who vanished within a few months of our system being installed. We weren’t given the operator code, which was a minor difficulty when we went to change phone numbers.

The only other points I would add are:

1/ give consider serious consideration as to whether you want a remote controller to (de)activate your system. I’m no expert but I suspect that these make systems more vulnerable electronically and, if someone gets hold of your keys, they have your remote to turn the alarm off as well. Many people get remotes so that they can arm the house after they have backed out of the garage but you can set the alarm to delay activation (eg 90 seconds) to give you time to back out and shut the garage door.

2/ consider systems (and multiple controllers) that make it very quick and simple to activate various zones of your house (and from different points). For example, we alarm various areas of our house even when people are at home (depending on who is at home and activities at that time – such as sleeping).

3/ get the installer to show you how to change the battery when it is due (apparently about every seven years). This will save you a call out fee.

and LiamaFrog +1 (I had a good giggle)

Special G said :

Best solution is to have your house alarmed with screamers/sirens both inside and out.

Yep. Ditto. And make sure the screamers inside the premises are really, really loud.

getbobclub said :

stay away from CSS and s1. they are both newhams and both dead set crooks. there contracts are deceitfull at best and crimial in the way they sell them.They treat there staff like dogs and dont care about csutomer after they sign up. check out the acis site to see just how css treats its most loyal clients.

I second that sentiment….

stay away from CSS and s1. they are both newhams and both dead set crooks. there contracts are deceitfull at best and crimial in the way they sell them.They treat there staff like dogs and dont care about csutomer after they sign up. check out the acis site to see just how css treats its most loyal clients.

Bah, Crimtech Systems.

The recommendation I forgot to give months ago, I just ran into him today after wondering where he went…

Lindon Burgess, of CrimTech Systems does efficient work, good clean installs, good service, knows his systems, and is now running his own business instead (with free quotes).
He does alarm installs, access control, cameras, alarms, intercoms, digital and voice cabling.

Lives in Tuggeranong, but operates Canberra-wide.

Don’t under estimate Skid… LOL

Wow Skid – footnoted comments!? That HAS to be a first for RA…
Before you know it, we’ll have Wiki-style bibliographies.

@kevn:
In terms of getting a response to a premises (in case of alarm activation or anything else), normally you’re pulling a guard off their normal set run to attend to the premises.

If have satellite tracking of your cars (or guards) of the variety more often used by freight\cargo & asset handling companies for working out exactly where the truck\asset is at a moment’s notice, the control room should be able to get a readout of where the guard is, what direction and speed they’re doing, and a wealth of other information [1].

All it takes is a bit of routine system maintenence to load into the system major points of interest or the location of your patrolled site clients into it, and Robert’s your father’s brother.

One benefit of this is that guards get to have instructions on how to arrive at a site fairly quickly, but as Canberra isn’t particularly big, the roads are good, and you can easily divvy it up into a few areas for patrolling purposes (Lanyon-Tuggeranong-Hume, Tuggeranong-Woden, Weston-Woden, Fyshwick-Inner South-Airport, Queanbeyan, Civic, Belconnen, Mitchell-Belconnen, Mitchell-Gungahlin) getting a car off-patrol to attend to a response becomes a matter of just checking relative distances and getting the closest one there.

It becomes easier if you have multiple cars offset in each area (so one car comes through at 1900hrs, and another does a similar patrol 3 hours later, and then the first guy comes back or you start two cars at roughly equal times at opposite ends of a patrol, etc)

15 minutes really isn’t hard if the organisation is of reasonable size, and the staff are organised.

But, no burglar is going to sit around for 15 minutes with an ear-piercing siren going off.

[1] Other information:
Ever been at a golf course and wondered why the fairway is torn up, but all the gates are locked? Check with Security.
(the minutia of other details can range from “are their doors closed”, “what revs has the engine been doing”, “is the engine at idle”, to “has the panic alarm been hit”)

Thanks for all the advice, people. Interesting points.

Skidbladnir – a lot to think about in your first post, but what do you mean by ‘track your guards’.

Try Intelligent Services

U5/ 157 -167 Gladstone St Fyshwick 2609(02) 6239 1100

http://www.coraldrive.com.au/

Responses within 10-15 minutes aren’t actually hard to achieve in Canberra if you’re organised, and can track your guards.
But anyone using that as a sales point should be able to back up that claim.

(don’t believe the salesman spin unless its available as a guarantee)