Alarm.com for Your Home

Alarm.com's Advanced Technology Means Better Protection for Your Home
Most people would agree that a home security system is an important tool for protecting their family members and valuables from the threat of intrusion and from safety hazards like fire and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Alarm.com technology is designed to enhance the reliability, functionality, ease-of-use and compatibility of a traditional home security system.

With Alarm.com's patented wireless technology, all alarm signals are immediately transmitted through a dedicated wireless connection from the home security system to the Alarm.com Operations Center, and are routed from there to the central monitoring station for emergency notification and dispatch. There is no threat that your home's security will be compromised by a line-cut when you use Alarm.com. The availability of the wireless connection used by Alarm.com to communicate alarm signals is supervised at the security system and at the Alarm.com Operations Center to ensure always-on reliable signaling.

If you're considering a home security system that uses the Internet to send alarm signals, keep in mind that when your power goes out, your Internet connection goes out as well. Power outages are not a significant threat to traditional alarm systems that use the phone line, because most security control panels come with a battery backup and because analog phone lines continue to function during a power outage. Because your connection to the Internet typically depends on at least one AC-powered device (such as a cable modem or DSL modem), when the power is out, you lose your connection. Putting a battery backup on each layer of your home network can be costly and tedious. Plus, even though most ISPs are very conscientious about Internet connection uptime, there are nevertheless times when your local Internet connection will not be available due to a temporary problem with your home networking gear, your modem or due to system maintenance being conducted by the ISP.

With Alarm.com's wireless alarm communicator, you never have to worry about power outages. The Alarm.com wireless module and your security control panel use a dedicated backup battery that can provide power for over 24 hours in the event of an outage. That means you have complete security protection even when your power is out.

Alarm.com's wireless communicator can be used as a primary communication path in homes that don't have an analog landline telephone connection (see the compatibility section below), or it can be used as a backup connection to the phone line to communicate alarm signals in the event that the phone line connection fails.
 

The good news is that intrusion and fires, while serious threats, are not everyday occurrences. That means that your security system stands vigil everyday (if you arm it), but it doesn't actually do anything.

At Alarm.com, we think your security system should be interacting with you everyday, providing you valuable information about what's happening in your home, even when the system isn't armed.

With an Alarm.com-enabled security system, you can keep track of everything that happens in your home all the time, not just the alarms. Here's an example of how it works:

1. It's 5:00 PM on a weekday. Your home's Front Door sensor opens.
2. The sensor reports this event to your main security control panel. Sensors can be wired to the control panel or they can send reports through a wireless connection.
3. Your security control panel receives the event and processes it to determine whether it's an alarm or not. (In this case, the system was not armed, so the event is not an alarm.)
4. The Alarm.com module connected to your security control panel is "listening" to everything coming in from the sensors. It picks up the door opening event and transmits the event wirelessly to the off-site Alarm.com Operations Center. (Don't worry, this transmission is encrypted and it's optional - if you don't want your sensors to report non-alarm activity, you can turn off the feature.)
5. The Alarm.com Operations Center processes the signal and checks your personal notification settings to find out if you requested an email or text-message alert for this type of event.
6. Alarm.com alerts you via text-message to let you know that the Front Door opened. You are able to avoid getting too many alerts by using scheduled notifications that are only active at certain times of day for each day of the week.
7. You receive the text-message alert on your mobile phone and decide to log into the Alarm.com website while at work to check the current status of your security system. On the website, you can see all of the sensor events reported in the last 60 days and search for specific events using search filters. You can also choose to arm the system remotely, turn lights on or off, create user access codes and much more.
8. While you're logged into the website, you notice that the Kitchen Motion sensor has activated, which means someone is in the kitchen. You also notice that your children's bedroom motion sensor activates. Without the need for cameras (which you have not installed in your home for privacy reasons) you are able to see that your family is home for the day.
9. You log out of the Alarm.com website, pack up your laptop and head home for dinner with the family.

As you can see from the example above, Alarm.com brings "high tech" to home security. The Alarm.com website enables remote monitoring and control from any Internet-connected computer or PDA. Real-time e-mail and text-message alerts keep you posted about what's happening at home. With notification schedules, you can make sure that your Alarm.com security system doesn't overwhelm you with too many alerts at times when they aren't required.

The above example shows the Front Door opening, but there are many locations that can be monitored with Alarm.com's exclusive, always-on sensor activity monitoring feature. You can keep track of activity on: your entrance doors, your overhead garage door, your interior bedroom and home office doors, your valuables closet/cabinet, your liquor cabinet, your medicine cabinet, your teenager's bedroom window, the back door that leads out to your swimming pool, your tool shed, and much more. You can also monitor activity reported by any motion sensor installed in your home to see when and where people are moving around.

With Alarm.com, you get all of the protection and functionality of a traditional home security system, and a lot more.
 

Ease-of-Use
Alarm.com systems are easy to use. With Alarm.com, most of your security system settings can be managed through a user-friendly website interface. That means you don't have to learn how to program your system using a complicated alphanumeric touchpad. Because the main user interface is a website, Alarm.com is able to offer customers many advanced features that wouldn't be feasible through a touchpad. Through the Alarm.com website, customers can see current system status, access 60 days of system event history, arm or disarm the system, create and change user access codes, program lights to turn on when a specific sensors opens or on a schedule, set up custom e-mail and phone notifications, and much more.


Compatibility
Alarm.com is compatible with the other technologies you use in your home. Traditional security systems rely on landline "plain old telephone service" (POTS) to send alarm signals to the central monitoring station. If you are one of the millions of Americans who has dropped your landline for VoIP (voice over IP) or cell-phone-only telephone communications, you need a security system that can work without a traditional phone system. Alarm.com is the answer. With Alarm.com all alarms and other events are transmitted through an always-on, dedicated wireless connection from your security system to the Alarm.com Operations Center. That means you don't need a phone line, an internet connection, a home network or any other communications infrastructure.