Ring Alarm 14-Piece Kit – Wireless Smart Home Security System | Expandable | Easy Setup | Mobile App Control | 24/7 Professional Monitoring | Alexa Compatible

Replacing an existing obsolete wired-in alarm system with a RING wireless alarm. Ring is very good, but it's Terms & conditions are terrible. The RING system itself does meet my needs, but there are lots of things you should know.AFTER I started to install, I was required to read Terms & Conditions to set up an account. Upon reading them, HOLY SMOKES, that is the MOST one-sided agreement I've ever read. It is so bad, by agreeing, you are at fault for anything you ultimately don't like about RING. [Not that much of an exaggeration]. Blame their lawyers.Why do I continue? After lots of research, it is otherwise a very good real world solution in this wireless age. All the sensors you will install ARE wireless. I am replacing a wired system, and it has wires everywhere. Not fun. Also my OLD system could have the phone line cut. Not with RING. If it generates an alert, it will sound at the house's base station alarm AND connect to your cellphone even if the house's internet/TV/Phone cable were cut, it would bypass the cable and go wirelessly through a cell phone tower. If it's a fire alarm and you sign up for the 24/7 monitoring, it will try to contact you, and/or dispatch the fire department. A false alarm might get you a bill for the nuisance of a false alarm. Not your biggest worry, I'm sure.[ JAN 2024: Just had a prolonged power outage with severe cold. So cold, we drained water and left for warmer circumstance. It reported for 20+ hours by connecting thru cell tower, since house's router was down, and told us when the power came back on! Not Bad! ] [update - you can get more battery backup for longer outages]Compared to my old system, if I forgot to set it before I left, I was out of luck. Now, with RING, I could quickly set it from my cellphone.You can even create a regular schedule for nitetime on and off and/or for working hours away. THIS IS VERY HANDY. This solves the problem of constantly having to remember. Great for peace of mind!Your power goes out? PHONES go out? Unless your cellphone is dead or unavailable, you will be notified. So would the fire dept if need be.Some say a RING doorbell might need a new transformer. All the big box stores stock the transformers. If so, some of you may want an electrician. Alternatively, bribe a friend or family member with a six pack. I'll do mine myself.Motion sensors work well. [update - there are several available ring-tones to use, and after 2 years, they have never bothered us, in fact, they help us locate each other, a real time saver.]Door/Window contacts also work well. On my sliding glass doors, they are well enough hidden. On Entry doors such as the Front door, they stick out big time. I will eventually have to carve out 'pockets' in both the door and the door sill for the contacts. Do-able, but not fun.Two ways to handle FIRE/CO [carbon monoxide]. FIRST, IF your existing alarms are new enuogh, RING sells a 'listener' sensor to stick up next to each fire alarm. That 'listener' will notify the base station of the type and location of any activated alarm in the house. SECOND option, replace the existing fire detectors with battery operated FIRST ALERT fire and CO sensors with Z-WAVE which will talk to the RING base station perfectly. update - these have worked very well] Before you choose, consider this: Most if not all fire sensors have to be replaced with new ones every 7 - 10 years. You might not think that's a big deal, but your insurance company might disagree especially if they are giving you an alarm rebate. Don't know for sure. Check with your insurance about a rebate on your premium. It should be worth it. [update - you might be surprised by the savings.]Kitchen, garages, unfinished basements normally need HEAT sensors. There are heat sensors by others, and hopefully the RING listeners will respond. In my case, [update - haven't bothered to try this yet] I will see if the RING 'listeners' can hear them, and if so, leave my old heat sensors in place. In any event, RING needs to come up with a wireless, battery operated HEAT sensor - my opinion.The basic setup of a new system is easy enough, but takes a few minutes for you to install/activate each device.As far as installing the new devices, it should go easy enough, but it isn't something you can do during the halftime of a football game without pre-planning. My system is the 14 piece system. I needed to use contact cement on several sensors because the self-adhesive strip wasn't where I needed it. Double sticky foam tape might work as well. Also, several door frames needed shims.My windows are crank-out [casement] window, so they aren't getting contact sensors. My motion sensors work well enough - the dogs set the alarm off 50+ times when we left the house and set the alarm for 'away'. We later found emails for each time the dogs moved through a sensor. My phone was off during a wedding, or I would have quickly reset the alarm to 'home' which would have been just fine. Ring central was annoyed with me, but I explained and they laughed even after having called the police. It ended well.My basement windows need sensors, but my guess is today's burglar is going to come in through the garage door anyways by hooking the manual release handle with coat hanger wire. I suggest cutting the cord right at the handle-end and leave it dangle but take the handle itself off. that way the cord can't be snagged from outside. Motion sensors will hopefully catch anyone who gets in anyways. [update - I updated my garage door opener, and it has a wireless notification system also, and it is now integrated into the RING system . Cool!]Congratulations if you have read this far. Their product seems very good to me. Their Lawyers? Not so much. Read their agreement.We use the PRO level protection plan [the highest]is $20/month or $200/year, and that will do the job for me for half the cost of the old professionally installed system. We get a rebate on our home insurance that almost pays the monitoring expense.There is a $3/mo and a $10/mo plan also, but they don't provide the professional monitoring or any possible insurance rate reduction. Ring has a comparison chart you should read.If you want to save video for 30 days from your doorbell the $3/mo plan does that. Other cameras as well? that's the 10/mo plan with RING. Check it out. I do want the automatic fire dept notification though. That's 20/month.The RING system has worked well out of the box so far without needing fancy adjustments. However, you CAN tailor each device separately to work how you want. alarm/no alarm set a different ring tone, LOTS of possibilities and VERY useful.It is much MUCH more flexible than my old wired system. You can set a delay just before you leave the house. We use it and it gives us time to re-enter and find what we forgot. Also Cool!While the RING system comes with very useful good keypad[s], you WILL NEED your cellphone for the install process, and daily use plus any system changes you'd want. Use the keypad while at home for setting/unsetting the system, or use your cellphone if you have already left but forgot to set it. I LOVE that feature.For your safety, make sure you have strong passwords on RING [and also on AMAZON if you use an ALEXA service such as an echo camera].I did have to upgrade my cellphone to a current model because I had an old version of GOOGLE ANDROID that couldn't be upgraded. If Android, the phone needs AT LEAST Version 10. I recommend a 5G phone but it will work on 4G phones as well. Also, you will need SMS messaging which also means you'll need a low usage data plan. Yes, I know, 99% of the cellphone world already does that, but in my profession, I can't have my customers messaging me all the time. Again, that's MY problem. Most likely you will be fine.Update - This might be the world's longest review, but the Ring system is that important. It is becoming more and more useful every day. We never used the old wired system, and that could have landed us in trouble with our insurance people, but now, we ALWAYSuse the Ring system. It is about the best thing I've added to our house. My Wife absolutely LOVES it.

After my father passed my mother was left in our family home where we all grew up where she spent her lifetime raising me and my brother and enjoying life with my father. Before my Dad passed he made me promise to take care of my mother and to keep her in her home as long as possible. He passed quietly in the night the way we all dream of passing in his home in the bathroom.After my father died my mother was just never the same. They had installed one of the old school alarms that just beeps at you and doesn't interact with a cell phone and requires a tech to do anything with. So I spent hours and hours looking into the best alarm and CCTV camera systems. After getting price quotes of $10,000 to $30,000 I finally started working with a company out of Houston and when they came to install the system I took one look at the touch keypad and knew it was far too complex for my mother to operate. She needed something really simple that just provided th basics of arming to stay home, arming to leave and disarming. Thats it. We also wanted to integrate a camera system so we could keep an eye out on my Mom and feel like more a part of her lives. I live in NY and can't move back b/c the only Dr. who has had success treating Stage 4 Renal Cancer is out of New York. So I have to liv ei n New York. My brother lives in Oahu on the North Shore and has brought his daughter and his wife up in that paradise he would never dream of moving. One thing I have to say is that my mother and father developed so many deep, meaningful friendships that any day at their home feels like grand central station. Friends just drop by almost hourly to visit with their kids and they always bring a dish to eat and keep Mom company.Doug and i had moved into a new apartment in New York after recently selling our 3 bedroom home in Mahhattan. Originally the plan was to move back to Texas and help Mom transition to a life without my Dad but I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cancr and given less than 6 months left to live. Lucikly I have a friend who introduced me to Dr. Kotecha who is the only Dr. in the world who has been able to treat his patients turn a terminal disease into something manageable. Unfortunately no other Dr. that I am aware of has had anything close to these results. So I am forced to stay in New York until I find a treatment that stabilizes and remains the same. Until then he is my best shot at staying alive.So when we moved we installed a Ring Doorbell camera, interior camera and camera for our little outdoor space. I spoke to my brother about which system to use for Mom and he told me that he recently installed a Ring system on his property which made me realize that if we installed a Ring alarm and cameras we could all watch Mom's cameras and see who was coming and going.Our plan worked perfectly. We replaced the old out of date alarm with no cameras with a Ring alarm system with cameras placed in key areas around the house. We made sure to use the cameras that could detect a person on every major area that we were concerned about since some of the new upgraded Ring cameras can tell the difference between branches, small animals and a person approaching the house. We even installed a few cameras around the house in the Kitchen and living room.The difference is night and day. We are now able to see the cameras at Mom's house with our own cameras. We get notifications when a person is detected, if the alarm went off and when all the lights are turned off at night. Mom recently broke her hip so we have spent a lot of time with her and installed this system. We can now tell if she is upset in the kitchen or living room or if she has gone to bed by just looking at our cameras. The brilliant thing about ring is you can invite other ring owners to add cameras and alarm systems to show up with your own equipment. There are several options as to how you can display your cameras and the ring cameras at my Moms and in general it has made a world of difference having my brother and his wife along with me and my husband to be able to watch the cameras and she who is coming and going.For me Ring has been a life saver and I can genuinely say that this product has changed my life. It has given both me and my Mom a sense of peace we didn't have before. For years I felt badly that I couldn't move back to Texas but life is life and sometimes you just can't all live in the same place. Now with the ability to be able to watch the cameras at my mother's place I feel like I am living with her. It literally feels the same as if I was livjng with her. If I see that nobody has visited or she is having a hard day I call her, if she is super. busy I don't. It has made a much stronger connection between us and you can never pur a price on connection with family. So hats off to Ring for figuring out how to easily share cameras from one system to another. Ring has forever changed my life and made me much closer to my mother and she now feels much safer now that her "boys" are looking after her. Before he used to stack things against the doors and now she is happy and never worries about living alone bc she knows we look in on her and she no longer lives at home.If if you have a loved one this is the system for your home and theirs. It just works so easy and provides great protection. Just be sure to always choose the cameras that can detect a person. That is super important.Hope this helps b/c it has helped me so much and changed my life.