Well to say I’m underimpressed would be an overstatement on this alarm system. While I didn’t expect all the bells and whistles for this low end system I at least expected it to be somewhat functional. My main goal here was to be able to be notified if the house was broken into prior to the kids getting home from school. I have no expectation that any alarm is going to prevent a house from being broken into if the thief has a mission.
I purchased the Protector Plus DS7000, driveway sensor kit, extra power horns, etc. So here’s my feedback.
1. I also picked up the driveway sensor or the eagle eye motion sensor. This has obviously been miss-named as it should be the Helen Keller sensor. I have this mounted on a tree just over 6 feet off the ground and about 3 feet from the driveway. It’s approximately 10 feet to the center of the driveway. I can drive my 20 plus foot long, 5000 pound, 4WD truck past this sensor and not set it off. Yet my Home Depot motion light on the house more that 30 feet away comes on as I pass this blind sensor. I have to walk within 3 feet of this sensor to get it to work. So not exactly a useful item.
2. As has been mentioned in several threads not having a numerical code for the main box seems pretty stupid.
3. I’m would also like the ability to disable the alarm on the main box. Nothing better for a thief that a system yelling out hey come pull me off the wall so I won’t work anymore.
4. I have been unable to get this to work with Vonage VOIP. While I know others have gotten this to work mine doesn’t. I have another thread for this topic. But it’s not like this is a sophisticated alarm needing to send codes. It’s a dialer and message player so it’s strictly voice. I’m leaning toward the speed at which this thing dials. I’m guessing it’s not listening for a dial tone but just dialing which might be causing the problem. If it were smart enough to allow a pause to be programmed maybe it would work. My Chinese made phones don’t seem to have a problem dialing out so not sure why this system does. Also since it’s just a dumb box it doesn’t even wait for an answer to start playing the message. If you’re slow answering your phone you may not get the message since it starts playing immediately after dialing.
5. Sensor assignment. Well it would be nice to be able to remove sensors and add them without having to start from scratch and hope to not make any mistakes. I learned that if you close the cover to the door sensors prior to moving the switch out of install mode it will push the test button and assign these to multiple spots. So you now can’t delete this extra assignment without starting over. Similar issue if the motion sensors see motion when being set that they will get multiple assignments.
6. Motion sensors. See point number 1. These things are pretty much ineffective. I can do jumping jacks in front of these things and occasionally it will work. The two I have are mounted around 7 feet off the floor.
7. No external alarm ability. I can say that you can’t hear the alarms outside my house so it’s really only an annoyance to whoever might be breaking in. It’s certainly not going to be attracting any attention. I also have the extra sirens so this isn’t the issue.
8. Since I’ve learned and now have done additional research I’m finding other alarms have a wider array of sensors that are not available from X10. Like smoke, CO2, water, freeze, etc. But I’m guessing if X10 made them they probably wouldn’t work.
9. What’s up with the half naked chicks? I guess a snake oil salesman needs a gimmick or distraction. While I’ve heard of smoke and mirrors it seems X10’s gimmick is butts and boobs. Maybe if they spent some money on technology, working on the many short comings instead of models this might actually make for a neat system.
10. Opting out of the SPAM email doesn’t seem to be working as I’m still getting their butts and boobs emails.
11. As mentioned in other threads the remotes are far too big. Come on guys the Chinese can make smaller items get on the band wagon.
My lesson learned here was I should have spent some time in the forums reading up on this and I might have not wasted my time and money on this system. Well after toying with this for several days I’ve decided I will be trying out the RMA and 30 day refund policy.
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Topic: Underimpressed is an overstatement for the DS7000 (Read 20584 times)