Easy Fit SmartPhone Alarm vs SmartHome Alarm

[E999]

These are totally different animals and the decisive factor for me would be that you have more chance of fitting the Yale yourself as the manual is more friendly. However it is indeed a complicated bit of kit.

I really think Yale finally have a serious product for the pro market. Would like to see the app when its released next year...

Yes the smart phone alarm really is more of a gimmick system and Ive just seen the cost( we did not purchase as customer free issued) .

Of course there will be a massive buy in from the domestic market who will buy due to its internet features. On a positive its nice to see Yale releasing so many products of which all are good quality.

I'm fitting Visonic this week........This manual really is a nightmare!!
Matt

 

[TLM]

Yale Smart Alarm vs Honeywell Galaxy Flex? does anyone else have something further to add to help make my decision?

Thanks

 

[socdesign]

Yale Smart Alarm vs Honeywell Galaxy Flex? does anyone else have something further to add to help make my decision?

Thanks

I've not much experience with the Yale products, but can say that the Galaxy range are excellent products and offer flexibility for the domestic install. Since the Dimension panels are still cheaper on Ebay, I would still choose the Dimension over the Flex. The only real benefit of the Flex is that it offers a plastic casing, so wireless portal modules can be fitted internally to the panel, rather than in external plastic housings. I normally fit the portals somewhere central to the detectors, so the plastic housing doesn't benefit me.

On my own home I have a Dimension panel and have it controlling two sets of external lighting, the garage door and some other internal circuits. The Flex has the capability to do exactly the same. I also use the Android keypad app which provides full access to my panel. Anyone in my family can simply bring up the keypad when we receive self monitoring events via the panels low cost IP module.

I don't think that the Galaxy range are too difficult to configure and there's plenty help out there. They're certainly professional grade pieces of kit, with technology that's been proven for quite some time. You certainly get value for money when self installing them.

 

[rishidshah]

I have just fitted the Yale Smartphone alarm. It was easy to fit and i like all of the features.

But what really hacked me off was that the Yale Central Alarm server that this unit uses was down for 3 days from 03/01/2014. No support what so every from Yale and it did not come back online till 06/01/2014 at 02:00.

During this outage i could not use any of the martphone features and i could not configure the alarm at all. You can arm/disarm it using the keypad, but like me if you had a tamper issue on one of the sensors during this time, without the smartphone features you could not even exclude this sensor to arm it.

SO for 3 days i had no alarm and this was not helpful.

I lost all my faith in Yale due to this. It was the total lack of service during this outage that really made be loose all faith.

Basically your alarm panels connects to the internet and connects to the Yale Central Alarm Server. When you logon with your smartphone you are logging into the central alarm server. From here any commands you send go from the Central Alarm Server to your local alarm panel.

So the smartphone application does not have a direct connection to your alarm panel. Its always via the Yale Central Alarm Server.

I was simply surprised that Yale let the server go down for 3 days and had no Disaster Recovery or monitoring in place to bring back the server online, considering that without this Yale Central Alarm server you have nothing.

Hence the alarm and features are good, Yale's implementation of how the alarm is accessed is poor and clearly lacks monitoring or disaster recovery.

 

[E999]

I have just fitted the Yale Smartphone alarm. It was easy to fit and i like all of the features.

But what really hacked me off was that the Yale Central Alarm server that this unit uses was down for 3 days from 03/01/2014. No support what so every from Yale and it did not come back online till 06/01/2014 at 02:00.

During this outage i could not use any of the martphone features and i could not configure the alarm at all. You can arm/disarm it using the keypad, but like me if you had a tamper issue on one of the sensors during this time, without the smartphone features you could not even exclude this sensor to arm it.

SO for 3 days i had no alarm and this was not helpful.

I lost all my faith in Yale due to this. It was the total lack of service during this outage that really made be loose all faith.

Basically your alarm panels connects to the internet and connects to the Yale Central Alarm Server. When you logon with your smartphone you are logging into the central alarm server. From here any commands you send go from the Central Alarm Server to your local alarm panel.

So the smartphone application does not have a direct connection to your alarm panel. Its always via the Yale Central Alarm Server.

I was simply surprised that Yale let the server go down for 3 days and had no Disaster Recovery or monitoring in place to bring back the server online, considering that without this Yale Central Alarm server you have nothing.

Hence the alarm and features are good, Yale's implementation of how the alarm is accessed is poor and clearly lacks monitoring or disaster recovery.

Sorry to hear this BUT as I previously stated the alarm is more of a gimmick than a real communicating system.......

The Yale Smart Alarm ENA-kit2 is the unit to fit....far far superior than the smartphone alarm.....

 

[JohnD]

Let us know what they say when they reply to your letter of complaint.

 

[E999]

Yes I will also be interested in their response to "the system being down"......

When we fitted a smartphone alarm back in early december we had to speak with Yale re a techy problem and I spoke to the product manager, a guy called mac or somthing and I told hime I though the alarm was gimmicky...he responded by advising its their fastest selling model!!

I also told him that they have a serious compeditor to visonic with the smart alarm.....they have plans to develop it further in 2014 which I'm real interested by...