My First Alarm.com Security System – by Mina Loutfi

Growing up in a small city, we never worried about our security protection at home or thought twice about it. Keep in mind that we did do our basic practice of “personal security”. We made sure to close and lock our windows and doors at night or whenever we left our home for the day, we certainly did not announce our vacation plans and alarm.com smarthome was certainly not invented yet.

This worked well for us, we never had any problems except the one time my bike was stolen from our back yard when I was 12. I blame it on not having a gate installed for the back yard.

Back in the early to mid 90’s, home alarms were more catered to people who had bigger homes. You know the type that have 2 or 3 garage doors, a pool, and those huge satellites in their backyard. Well that has changed now and alarm systems are for everyone, even if you live in a small condominium.

It’s 2018, many years have past and now I own my own home with my fiancé. At first, we did not have a security system, we didn’t think we needed one at the time. As the months went by, I was lucky enough to land a job with a company called SecurU.

SecurU has been in business for over 20 years and are experts in residential and commercial security space. I have been working with SecurU for a year and a half. In this time, I have learned a significant amount about security in general.

One of the first things that was done when I started working with the company was having my first Alarm.com security system installed at our home so that I could ensure our property was protected and I could learn how to operate the system.

At first, I was a little bit hesitant with having an alarm system. I would ask myself “would we even use it?” Now I can’t imagine life without one.

Here is why, Alarm.com is not your typical alarm system where you arm the house when you leave and then disarm when your back. It’s much more than that, it`s a smarthome alarm that completely automates your house. When I say, “completely automates your home”.

I mean it does it all, from controlling Weiser Deadbolt locks for your doors, to having full control of your Alarm.com thermostat so the temperature is just right when you walk through the door and the Alarm.com video doorbell is helpful to know who’s at your door on your smartphone.

That’s just the tip of the ice berg but I am not going to bore you with all the tiny details, lets talk about how it works for me and how I use it through day to day life.

As I said before my fiancé and I own our own home, at the same time I have a roommate that lives in our basement. This is where having the Alarm.com system comes to play. I created a user account on my Alarm.com system for my roommate. Now whenever he comes home and disarms the alarm, we receive a notification on our mobile phones indicating that the user has disarmed the system from the panel. This feature blew me away, but it gets better from here.

Now, I know some mornings can be chaos and sometimes you leave your home wondering “did I arm the system?”. Well if you have the Alarm.com system, you won’t run into this problem anymore. You can create a rule that sends you an “arming reminder” when your phones leave the home geo fence configured on your system you will receive a pop-up, email or text message notification. If the alarm has not been armed; its just one tap on the screen and your home is now protected. Believe me, I have had to use this feature on more than one occasion.

Here is another fitting example of how this system is amazing. We have a cat and dog at home. My dog is a senior and doesn’t get too far fast. My cat is an indoor cat but is always trying to run out.

One day my soon to be wife and I were leaving the house to pick up some groceries, we did not arm the system as we thought we will be back in 20 minutes. 5 minutes away from home, I received a notification on my phone saying, “the back door was open for more than 5 minutes.” Now, as soon as I read that, I pulled a U-turn and headed back to our home. First thing we noticed, the cat was hanging out on the lawn furniture enjoying the sun (it looked liked he was tanning).

I looked at the door and see that it was open. What happened was when the fiancé shut the door, the door was hitting the mat and this prevented the door from latching. I was just happy to see my fur animals were safe and sound. This was because the amazing feature on the Alarm.com system that notified me when my door was open for too long.

I can truly say that I love my Alarm.com system and the best part is, I am only using the “basic interactive” service package that is offered with the basic system. This means that I do not have any of the home automation features yet! I plan on upgrading soon to the “interactive gold” package soon and building our system with light control, garage door, locks and the thermostat, first on my list will be the Weiser lever handle lock with Z-Wave built-in so I won’t have to make spare keys for the in-laws.

When considering your first Alarm.com home security system, the Qolsys IQ panel 2 is an an amazing solution and is offered at SecurU with the the alarm.com basic interactive service plan