Self-monitored alarm systems have become a growing trend amongst end users.
At least once a week I am asked if it is possible to monitor your own alarm system. Even commercial and retail clients are asking me. Of course, the answer is always an unequivocal “No”, which is always followed by the client’s inevitable question, “Why?”
At this point, most people think I am just being biased because I want to sell them a monitored system. Every time this happens I tell them the same story about Joel Matlin, president of AlarmForce, and how the self-monitored portion of his home alarm system almost failed him completely.
VideoRelay — monitored by the end user
AlarmForce is one of North America’s largest home alarm companies. Their systems include the typical features found in today’s modern alarms: wireless devices, two-way voice, and motion-activated cameras marketed by AlarmForce as VideoRelay.
VideoRelay is a low resolution camera that calls or emails images to users whenever it is activated. The camera has also built in two-way voice capabilities. The crippling catch? The camera is not monitored by the AlarmForce central station; it is monitored by the end user.
February 4, 2012, Joel Matlin was visiting friends in Florida when his VideoRelay camera was triggered at his Toronto area home (more than 2,000 kilometers away).
His VideoRelay camera first called his cellphone, but he missed the call. Moments later, his phone received an email with images of several suspicious men outside his front door. By the time Matlin read the email, the men were gone and he was not able to utilize the two-way voice feature.
Instead, he called the Toronto Police and asked them to check on his home and emailed them the images from his camera. He also called his step-son, Robbie, who was away from the home but would be returning later that night. Matlin then turned off his cellphone and went to sleep.
Back in Toronto (at 4:30 a.m.) Matlin’s step-son Robbie awoke to the sound of the alarm system announcing the phone line had been cut.
Seconds later he heard someone trying to kick in the front door. He ran downstairs, turned on the lights, and confronted a group of men who immediately fled. Had Matlin’s cellphone been turned on, he would have received several alarms as the men surrounded the house leading up to the phone line cut.
Instead, Matlin was sound asleep in Florida, none the wiser of what had just taken place at his home in Toronto.
Lucky for Matlin, no one was hurt and nothing was stolen. The men who attempted the break-in were arrested later that day in connection with several other break and enters that took place around the same time.
The lesson to be learned is that Matlin’s alarm system never failed him. The monitoring system for his camera failed because it was self-monitored.
Had the initial alarm gone to a professional monitoring station, they would have been able to communicate with the would-be thieves while dispatching police, and had the thieves realised the system was monitored, they surely would not have returned.