An alarming piece of kit

Imagine popping down to the dairy for some milk and coming home to find your front door forced open and all your valuables gone. This has happened over 98,000 times in the last 18 months, and the number of burglaries solved in New Zealand is still a dismal 9.3%, meaning that a whopping 88,500 burglaries remain unsolved. That’s a staggering 164 burglaries each day where the perps got away with it.

I’ve previously reviewed a range of both indoor and outdoor security cameras. While they are a great deterrent and a useful way to help convict any scumbag trying to rip off your home, nothing quite beats a decent burglar alarm when it comes to making a wannabe burglar think twice about breaking into your house.

An armed home security system should detect when a window or door has been opened or when a person is moving through key areas of your house. Once detected, an armed alarm will typically wait for a predetermined period to give you enough time to enter your code to disarm it. If it isn’t disarmed, the alarm will go off, blaring hundreds of decibels of excruciating noise from its integrated siren, leaving any would-be burglar with no choice but to book it out of your crib. If your alarm is monitored, ADT can dispatch guards to your home.

Normally, however, the job of setting up a burglar alarm is a right pain in the ass for all those except for wiring experts. The folks at ADT have got it sorted, having just launched an updated version of their wireless home alarm system, the ADT Secure Home Connected DIY. Not only is it affordable for a burglar alarm, but it’s also easy enough to install that even I got it right. Doing it myself also meant I wasn’t handing out money to get the alarm installed. My inner cheap bastard approves!

The connected DIY consists of several components. The first is a touchscreen control panel that resembles a typical home assistant smart screen. Along with the touchscreen, you also get two wireless door and window sensors plus two wireless passive infrared (PIR) sensors.

This is enough to ensure that your front and back doors are monitored and that any motion through your home is captured. If you want to be super thorough, additional sensors (these include Leak and temperature sensors, glass break sensors, motion sensors, smoke detectors, door and window sensors, cameras, a panic button, and a key fob) can be bought from ADT and added to the alarm system with little to no fuss.

Because the sensors and control panel are wireless, getting set up is about as bomb-proof as possible, made even simpler by an easy-to-follow manual. I installed the sensors after connecting the touch screen to my home Wi-Fi and entering a few details.

The door sensors consist of a magnet and a magnetic switch. After pulling a small paper tag, the battery connects, and the panel registers that the sensor has been activated, telling you via a nifty voice prompt. Peeling back the adhesive and sticking the magnet part of the sensor to the door and the switch to the door frame, I told the control panel which door I’d bunged the sensors on and was good to go. Adding a PIR to my hallway and dining room saw the total set-up time a shade under 20 minutes. No sweat, swearing or issues, and most importantly, no farting about with fiddly wiring.

Because the sensors and control panel use Wi-Fi and Zigbee (or Z-Wave), the ADT panel can also work with other smart home gear. The panel has an option to detect existing Z-wave smart home gadgets. Because Z-wave is incredibly power efficient, the sensor batteries last a whopping 10 years, and equally handy, batteries are easy to replace.

Being an ADT alarm, the panel also has a SIM card which can send alerts to a mobile app (iOS/Android) and monthly subscriptions (starting at $14.99) for ADT’s alarm monitoring service. Like the control panel, the mobile app is straightforward. You can get an at-a-glance update of your alarm status and arm or disarm the system, which is super handy as the alarm can be disarmed as you pull up outside your home, making juggling groceries to enter the code to disarm the alarm a thing of the past. ADT say they are also working on a firmware update to the DIY Connect that should confer it with Alexa connectivity, so arming and disarming in the future might be as easy as asking Alexa to do your bidding.

Arming has two distinct modes – Home and Away. Aussie soap operas aside, the Home mode arms door and windows sensors but does not arm PIR sensors. This means you can move about inside your home, but anyone entering/exiting your home will trigger the alarm (unless, of course, they know the alarm code and can enter it within the preset period). The Away mode arms both door/window sensors and PIRs, so if anyone enters your home and/or moves about where there is a PIR, the alarm will be activated (unless they can enter the code and disarm it).

I opted to stick with the mobile app and not have the alarm monitored by ADT as my phone is always by my side, and as a cheapskate, it’s the more affordable option. If you opt for ADT’s monthly monitoring services, you’ll pay between $14.95 and $39.95 per month, which isn’t too bad.

If that’s the good, what’s the not-so-good? In reality, there is little to fault the Connected DIY. The only thing missing from the box is an external siren/floodlight, meaning you rely on the extremely loud siren baked into the control panel. ADT says they’re working on expanding available accessories to include a Z-Wave-compatible outdoor siren/floodlight. Here’s hoping it arrives soonish. The only other issue is that purchasing additional wireless sensors and accessories can only be done by calling and speaking to ADT. It’s not a biggie, but it’d be nice to be able to pop down to a Bunnings, JB Hi-Fi, or even go online to Mighty Ape to buy extra bits for the system.

The alarm system works like a champ. If either door is opened, a voice prompt tells me. Coupled with the super intuitive control panel and mobile app, there was next to no complexity involved in getting set up, and the alarm system’s wireless design means it’s easily expandible should you ever add an extension to your home.

https://www.adtsecurity.co.nz/home-security/diy/