Alarm control, on the go.
By john on Jun 10, 2009 in Apple, Home Automation, Home Security, featured
I’ve written many times here about the alarm system I’ve installed in my house. I’m a geek, and wasn’t satisfied with an ordinary alarm system from companies like ADT, Sonitrol, Brinks, etc. I wanted something with more interactivity, expandability, and ability to fit into the smart home I’ve been building out.
Alarm.com fit in well with what I wanted, and they kindly pointed me to a security company that provides alarm.com enabled services and was recommended. And so, my journey with FrontPoint Security began… and can be read about here in earlier posts.
After almost a year I am still very happy with FrontPoint Security, and the alarm system. The company has been very responsive whenever issues would arise – and that’s very important to me. I’m realistic enough to know that problems WILL arise with ANY system. The test of a company is how they handle those problems, and FrontPoint has exceeded my expectations. They are prompt in responding to issues, knowledgeable on the systems and how to fix things, and will continue to follow up until the issue is resolved to your satisfaction.
Recently the service, which for those who didn’t know allows you to access your alarm from anywhere in the world via the internet, sent an unexpected bonus my way – an iPhone app.
The free iPhone app, Alarm.com, allows you to log in to your alarm.com enabled services natively from the phone. This means I no longer have to go to a website, awkwardly enter my username and password, and use a sparse web interface to interact with my alarm system. While that method still works, and worked well enough for what I wanted before, the alarm.com app makes interacting with my alarm a beautiful experience.
The interface is clean and straightforward, allowing you to see the current status of the alarm (status of doors and windows, armed or disarmed, etc), change the status of the alarm (arm/disarm), see the past history of events on the alarm and, if you’ve got the service, you can view and interact with an alarm.com video camera.
All of this works beautifully from the iPhone app, and there looks to be expanded ability to do home automation functions directly from the alarm.com app on the iPhone in the works as well. The automation functions are ones I am waiting for, and am really hoping to see some cool things come from that.
The app is fairly sparse, but I didn’t expect much. That said, it’d be nice if I could use it to change alerts, and do “everything” the web app could. I’m not sure that’s realistic, or feasible, but it’s a “would be nice”.
Overall, I feel the app is a solid app for what it’s supposed to do. It gives people who have alarm.com powered alarm systems the ability to interact with their systems via a native iPhone app, and does a good job of doing that. It’s obvious that expanded functionality is coming soon as well, which means we have even more to look forward to.
I’ve been told that a Blackberry app is in development, so those of you with a crackberry addiction can get in on the phone app goodness as well.
In the year since I’ve started using FrontPoint’s Alarm.com powered service, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. New features and capabilities keep being rolled out which keep expanding on the base functionality, making it ever more useful for a geek like me.
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