That Puts the Control Back in Your Hands

I’m going to continue the conversation we’ve been having about police response and guard response to burglar alarm systems and signals. I went over the two dirty little secrets of the alarm industry ( see dirty little secret 1 and dirty little secret 2). After years of working in the alarm industry, and now years of helping people with their home security struggles on the web, we’ve decided to finally create our own solution.

I couldn’t find the solution we needed as homeowners with security systems, so we went ahead and created one.

We wanted to give people another, more affordable option to monitor their homes. We wanted to address the police response problem and the false alarm fines epidemic. And we wanted to give people a little more control over their situations.

We call it Blockwatch Alarm and this is how it works. Traditionally, alarms signals are put out by the alarm panel over the phone lines that go to a receiver at a central monitoring station somewhere remotely. At the central monitoring station there are people there 24 hours a day but unable to do anything more than answer alarm signals and make calls.

When they get that signal, their automation system pulls it up, tells them it’s the front door, the back door, whatever it is. And then they have a script that they follow of what to do next. It may be to call the premise first to see if someone’s there to get a password. It might be to call a customer on their cell phone. It may be go to the police department. It may be to contact a guard service. But it’s just a predetermined script that they follow.

They generally don’t text out notifications to anyone. They don’t email out. It’s a very linear process. They go through the script until it’s been handled and then they move on to the next one.

What we’ve done at APU is we’ve taken those signals that your home security system sends out ( you don’t even need to change your equipment), but instead of routing them to a central station, we’ve routed them to a receiver in the Cloud with a set of servers running 24 hours with your explicit instructions. We call it the Danger Network.

When the signal comes in, the Danger Network immediately sends out alerts exactly the way you told it to. It will send a phone call, a text, or an email to whoever you decide. You specify specific actions for each type of alarm trigger. And you can always change it online, or see what signals have been sent.

It’s very interactive and the cost is much less expensive. And you have total control. And best of all, you choose the people you know and trust to watch out for your home. You can send an alert to a neighbor, and that neighbor can look out the window or walk right over.

If they see something suspicious, they call the cops with an eyewitness report that they will take far more seriously. The people you notify can they can check on any damage or opened doors and windows.

Plus, we have a service we call Blockwatch Plus, so when you have fire signals or medical signals or panic signals, those systems can be routed through to a central station to immediately alert the appropriate emergency response. They don’t need to handle the burglar signals, and history tells us that about 95-98% of all traffic running through the central station on a residential account is burglar alarm related. So, that enables us to get the cost down.

You can head on over to our Blockwatch Alarm page to learn more about the system and how it works. We even offer a free trial, and will set it all up with you.

We hope this new solution to home security monitoring will help turn the tide in the industry to something that is far more affordable and addresses the problems homeowners face. We simply don’t see why home alarm monitoring can’t be done better and at a more reasonable price.

It has also been perfect for communities and neighborhood watches. Condo associations have signed up as an entire community, and look out for each other. It has become a truly neighborhood solution to home alarm monitoring.

Tell me what you think of our solution in the comments below, or if you have any other home security struggles you face.