Skylink SC-100 Security System Deluxe Kit

I had an "inside" robbery at a second home which I discovered a month ago. I say "inside" as opposed to outside---I have also had an outside robbery of large patio furniture which I pretty much ignored. This time I knew I needed an alarm system. My house is in a VERY GOOD neighborhood and no one saw a thing either time. I live alone so I really was upset to know that someone had been in my house and really might come back.I looked into all the big systems---like ADT (my friends have that and they get all sorts of false alarms, so they never turn it on) and I met with the reps. I looked online at everything I could find. I found out about smash and grab, where a thief finds the control panel while the system is beeping and smashes it before the alarm sounds. Obviously, having it connected to your phone line is a problem because the thief can cut that. And you have to have a battery back-up.I didn't want to pay for monitoring. My neighbor said she saw a prowler around my house and called the police and by the time they got there, he was gone. So I just wanted something really loud to scare off the intruder immediately and wake up my very nice and responsible neighbors so they would call the police and come outside.I decided on ordering this system. I did not get the dialer, because of the "cutting the phone line" issue. I did read another reviewer's thoughts on smash and grab and bought two control panels. I also bought two alarms. Remember, the idea is to wake up the neighbors who, IMHO, should be grateful to know a robber is around.Unlike ADT and all the big companies, all the extras with this company are cheap. For $20-$30 you can get extra door sensors, motion detectors, and alarms. This was something I considered because I have 5 exterior doors alone and lots of windows at ground level. Most systems give you one motion detector and two door alarms. And the last thing I want is someone wandering around in my house until he happens to get to a sensor somewhere. So I bought sensors for all the doors and two motion detectors. (I am going to get some for the bedroom windows too).So far so good.I get the box which I expect to be huge, and it really is small and weighs ten pounds, maybe less. So I open it and start reading and WOW---not easy at all to put this thing together. It's not just the instructions either---the door sensors did not look anything like the ones I saw a woman install on a promtional video for another company. She just peeled off the tape and positioned them on either side of the door and off she went. This had little parts and wires and screws. So I looked again at the instructions. Don't EVEN believe that reviewer who put this thing together easily unless you are super good with electronics.So I call a ****brilliant techie**** college kid I know and he comes over and expects to spend an hour. Four hours later he leaves with the instructions. Get my drift! But he does have up one of the motion detectors (with the double sided tape) because he does not have the right drill bit for plaster. He also has up another motion detector secured to wood and half of all the door sensors are in place. The problem with the other half of the door sensors (the part needed to sound an alarm) is that NONE of my doors are flush with the molding. They have to be flush. He did not act like this was a big deal--something about buying and screwing rubber under it, etc. But *I* and perhaps *you* wouldn't know how to do this.We tested the alarm and if you are beside it---wayyyy loud. Disabling loud! However, I have plaster walls and if you are two rooms away---you hear it, but it is no big deal. Not what I thought it would sound like. The alarm then would only be a deterrent in that a robber would *hopefully* think it was alerting someone somewhere to do something.My brilliant techie never did figure out how to get the thing armed right and neither did I. I wanted the instant alarm (no delay). I know it will do that because it says so on the control panel, but we do not yet have that figured out. I did get it to work on delay and we had up the two motion detectors so I felt good with that level of security. However, for whatever reason, the second alarm and the second motion detector would not work with the control panel. I think add-ons take some time to get going, based on what another reviewer said.Here comes the good part. You should enjoy this at my expense.OK, so remember I have been robbed recently and I am not feeling safe in my very nice house in my very nice neighborhood. I am on edge during the day, looking for anyone suspicious driving about and *really* on edge at night. But now I feel much safer because I have a partial alarm and I have my key chain remote (Which works fabulously BTW---ignore people who want it coded so you know which is the off button, as this is not something you would want someone else to figure out right away).At 5 a.m. THIS morning (while I was asleep and it was very dark outside) I hear a distant thud in a nearby room and then the beeping of the alarm starts and I grab the key chain and push the panic button to make it go off sooner. Yes, it did seem coincidental that this was all happening the DAY I put this alarm in, but who wants to take chances. I called 911, barely able to breathe---remember, I did hear that thud and I have been robbed. So the alarm turns itself off, but I keep pushing the panic button on the keychain(4 times because it keeps turning itself off) to make it come back on, and it does, until the five policemen show up and take their flashlights and go around my house. No robber and no sign of entry. One comes inside and goes through my house. Nothing. Have I ever done this before---the answer is no.So they leave and I am wondering what the thud was and what is going on.Then I spot the culprit.Remember the sticky tape on the motion detector---the thing fell off the wall. I locate it behind a piece of furniture and as I am standing over it, the system starts beeping again, ready to go off. So the system does work---just don't use that tape, even overnight.Now here is the big thing. Remember my super responsible and wonderful neighbors---I'm sure you see them all out in their robes, standing in their yards, worried sick. Not exactly. No one, NO ONE woke up---not with the four times the 110 db alarm went off nor with the five policemen walking around my house. My lapdog didn't even bark.Are the houses far apart---NO! I have a neighbor on one side whose house is about 20 feet away. The others are a lot farther, but the alarm was in the bedroom closest to his house so he would wake up. Nothing. The police did not use their flashing police car lights or sirens---I don't even know where they parked (this would be my fault as they could not find the house since I don't have up the house numbers--but my neighbors do, so they did have some idea).Would I buy it again? I originally said yes and now I say no. It is important to note---I was pretty sure the big time expensive system alarms are 95 db---which is less powerful and who would want to pay an extra five hundred dollars to get a second one. So, I bought a few more alarms cheap. I thought I could find something for outside---a big horn or something like my neighbors have. If you have drywall (as opposed to brick and mortar walls---a builder built my house for himself so it is made quite well) then you are going to have a different experience. Probably a very loud system for an apartment.Pros: 1)Inexpensive for the starter sytem and really inexpensive for the add ons. 2)It apparently has different levels that will allow you to set a delay so you can enter and turn off the alarm or you can have it come on instantly if you are asleep and there is an intruder. It also has some sort of zone programming which, I assume, will allow you to be at home with certain zones on (like the doors and windows) but not the motion detectors. 3)It looked comparable to other, much more expensive systems and the alarm is actually louder than some of the expensive ones I looked at. 4) The key chain remote works well and is truly cool. Other systems don't give you this or charge you $100 extra for one. It has a red panic button and the other three have raised dots. One dot is to arm the system and the three dots are to turn it off. I don't know what the two dots are for.Cons: 1)Instructions are difficult to understand. Impossible for me. 2)The control panel is of no help at all in programming the thing. It just has lights to tell you if the thing is armed and what zones are armed. Thus far, the lights do not tell me how it is armed---whether it is chime (it has a chime mode) or delay or instant. There is no window with words that tell you what is going on. That one thing would be a vast improvement!!! Are you listening skylink? And the battery back-up light turns *on* if you have a low battery. That is a big flaw! Because when the battery goes out, the light will go out and you won't know if the battery is good or bad. It should be just the opposite. It should be if the battery light is out, you know you need to replace it. 3)Installation is not that easy---remember the door flush issue and the wires and screws and plates. But considering the price of the system, it was worth it to me to find some help. A comparable system would have cost me well over a thousand dollars and I would have had to pay the monthly monitoring fee. 4)It probably is not going to wake up your neighbors, unless you live in an apartment. 5)I had another false alarm---police came---I was embarrassed---no thud, no double-sided tape issue. I have no idea why it went off. The only thing active was one motion sensor and no one had been in the house and the dog was with me. No one in my neighborhood woke up. I even asked them---just if they heard it---no, they did not.UPDATE: More robberies in my neighborhood this summer, so I am really on edge and I totally regret buying this system. It would be fine for an apartment, but it is not loud enough to wake even my next door neighbors. My neighbors alarm across the street went off last week and it woke everyone up in the whole neighborhood. AND I thought they were all just heavy sleepers---no, mine is not loud enough. It just isn't. So I totally regret it. What's the point if it doesn't get someone to do something---mine is not connected to that dialer thing because that's no good if the phone is cut. I want my neighbors to get up and call the bleepin' police, like I did when his went off, so I can go back to bed.The other big negative with this system is that it only stays on 3 minutes and then turns itself off. That's ridiculous. So, I would return it if I still could. The only thing it is going to do is wake me up, assuming I am here. That's worth a star.

At the time of writing this review I have only had the system up and running for about a month. So far, I have not yet had any problems, and don't anticipate any to come up. I would rate this product with 5/5 stars, but a few minor things kept me at a 4/5, even though I am very satisfied with this product.First, be aware that the system comes with only a few pieces, and you will most likely need to buy extra motion sensors and/or door sensors if you own a house. I personally - after inquiring of the company - bought two SC-100 systems so that I would have extra sensors and because I was informed that they are compatible and work together. This is mostly correct. The two systems can be programmed so that all of the sensors activate both alarms at the same time (and therefore you have two separate alarms sounding, making it all that much more difficult for any crooks to disable), but both can only be activated or deactivated SIMULTANEOUSLY if you are using the remote clicker within range of both control panels. If you manually activate/deactivate on the keypad itself, it will only affect the control panel you are typing into (and you will therefore have to run through the house to activate/deactivate the second control panel and get in/out during the allotted 45 seconds). Also, any other function than the two pre-programmed "arm" settings of the clicker (1 - arm with no one home, 2 - arm with leaving someone inside, 3 - disarm, RED - sound alarm) will have to be entered manually. For example: coding in for 'Night Mode' before you go to bed will require you to manually arm both control panels. (However, if you have the extra keypad-only accessory (KP-434), you could program it to work for both control panels, and skip this step, but will have to pay for the keypad which does not light up).I did end up buying two extra motion sensors (PS-434a) for a total of 4, as well as an extra alarm (AA-433) for a total of 3 blaring sirens, which I put out in my detached garage to sound off in case someone were to break into that building.An individual components critique:1. Control Panel - Easy to understand and set up. Look through 'Advanced programming' in the instructions to get a good idea of how it all works, and figure out what sensors you want in which zones. The first CP I received nearly deafened me when I set it off. The second one was only about 75% as loud, and I have not been able to locate any change in its volume.2. Motion Sensor (PS-434a) - Settings can be adjusted to high or low, and an extra sensitivity adjustment comes with aiming the sensor down a little bit more. They pick up most movement in smaller rooms, but are sometimes limited by where you locate them. By this I mean, if you try to position them into a ceiling corner to keep them from being too noticeable, they WILL be limited in the direction that you aim them and the STILL WILL be somewhat noticeable. Despite this, they have served the purpose. I have yet to replace any batteries, and it has been one month.3. Door/Window Sensor (WT-433) - The directions say to have both magnets no more than 5/8 inches away from each other. The kit comes with 3 extra spacers and long enough screws that you should not have any problems. However, if you use all the spacers, the magnets become more noticeable than they already are. These sensors work wonderfully and I have had not trouble with the magnets. But I did not like that the sensor 'house' that attaches to the door frame magnet is on a relatively short wire, so that you can only position it about 6 inches away from the door frame magnet. This made it a little tricky on one or two of my windows/doors because there were not very good places to screw a little box. Also the 'house' is clearly visible by your door unless you can creatively hide it somewhere.4. Audio Alarm (AA-433) - I received this piece last. It's an alarm. It's very loud. It's very basic: sounds off only when the system goes into full alert. It does not give warning beeps during the 45-second entry delay (like the Control Panel does), but will rather just blare at you once activated. A nice feature is that you can program it to work with either the Control Panel (and system) or just individual sensors (ie, just the back garage door or basement door) or both at the same time.5. Clicker (4B-434) - No problems yet. Seems to work within the described 100 feet, although I have not measure this out :) The only disadvantages are, first - as many others have already said in other reviews - the buttons are hard to see. I took someone else's advice and colored around button 3 (disarm) so I could see it better. Second, the clicker-on-keychain is handy, but rather bulky. With a car clicker already attached to my keyring, this adds another, almost twice as large...'chunk' (for lack of a better word) into my pocket. But I would rather deal with the 'chunk' than have to run back and forth through the house all the time.Overall, I am very pleased with this system. The instructions for setup and programming were clear, it did not take long to set up, it is sensitive and loud enough to wake up anything in a 50-foot radius, and provides me and my family with a little more sense of security without the contract. At this point I do not plan to add any other accessories (such as the telephone dialer) to the current pieces I already have. I would recommend this product (and in fact, already have to family members).I hope this helps!Update 2013: I wouldn't change anything about my review, but a lot more time under the belt here are a few more observations.-Siren loss: the extra audio alarm gave out its siren within a year. Whatever went on inside of the thing was beyond my repair attempts. I WAS successful in re-soldering the connection to the siren in one of the keypad units and got its siren back, but it took a lot of tweaking to make sure the connection was there.-Re-programming: I still have yet to figure out in what situations I have to go back and reprogram the functions of the keypad. Sometimes they hold after power has been lost (see Battery Life). Sometimes they don't, and I have to go back in and re-set up the clickers and sensors.-Battery life: batteries are annoying. They never all go out at the same time and I have to get the ladder out of the garage about every other month to replace one sensor's battery. As well, the batteries in the keypad units always seem to get drained - a waste, and rather pointless to even have one in there as 'backup'.Keychain: one finally gave out recently, after 3 years. Not too bad of a life, but now I have to replace it and it's annoying to only have one person with a clicker.+Safe: I DO feel safer just having the system in place. I have two keypad units, and one is visible inside the front door. Anybody looking into the entryway can see the system is armed (or disarmed if we forget!) and I feel that at least this is some deterrent. Because I have a family this takes precedence over ANY of the above-mentioned annoyances.