My EnvisAlarm Monitoring Test Results

[Steve Jenkins]

I have EnvisAlarm monitoring two of my residences, and so I was curious to see their response time in the event of an actual alarm. Normally, to test your alarm, you call the monitoring company and have them put your alarm in "test mode," but I didn't want to test their test mode - I wanted to test their response time without any warning.

So I armed my alarm, waited for the exit delay, put my iPhone into stopwatch mode, and then opened a non-entry door.

+0 seconds: I opened my office door and the audible alarm on my system sounded.
+20 seconds: I received an SMS from the Eyez-On ESP service that informed me my office door had tripped the alarm.
+42 seconds: My home phone (which is the first contact number listed in my profile) rang. I authenticated with my password and told them everything was fine.

I've heard horror stories of it taking ADT over 5 minutes to call after an alarm trips. I think response should be well under a minute, and my test of the EnvisAlarm monitoring service showed they are comfortably under that threshold. I'll sleep a bit better tonight knowing they're babysitting my EnvisaLink 2DS.

[Bill D]

Steve,

Thanks for that excellent monitoring test and testimonial. I'm sold. I've been happy with my 2DS and I plan to add monitoring the next time I'm back at my house. I was thinking about initially only signing up month-to-month, but your testimonial has me leaning toward initially signing for the 3-year deal.

Coincidently, on a random search for info, I also just stumbled onto your blog post on disabling dialing.

[Ben]

Steve,

Thanks for that excellent monitoring test and testimonial. I'm sold. I've been happy with my 2DS and I plan to add monitoring the next time I'm back at my house. I was thinking about initially only signing up month-to-month, but your testimonial has me leaning toward initially signing for the 3-year deal.

Coincidently, on a random search for info, I also just stumbled onto your blog post on disabling dialing.

Hey Bill, can you tell us about your own experience ?

[Bill D]

Hey Bill, can you tell us about your own experience ?

I've had a 2DS for about 6 months and its done everything I've expected it to do, perfectly. It's installed in my 2nd home that I'm away from for extended periods of time.

The only trouble I've had is my router crashing while I'm away (not caused by the 2DS) so I've stayed with my old POTS monitoring service. I had a Linksys WRT54G router w/Tomato 1.25 firmware that I now have replaced with a D-Link DIR-655, which has been solid for a couple of months.

Once I'm sure my Internet service is solid with my new router, I plan to sign up for EnvisAlarm and drop my POTS line, which I only use for alarm monitoring (I use Ooma for my voice calls).