Scout Alarm Wireless Home Security System, Arctic

I bought this a few years back when we moved to a new house, since then we have been plagued by every issue under the sun... From the cops showing up saying that the alarm had been triggered (we were sitting in the living room and nothing was going off), to sensors that just wouldn't trigger when a door is open, to the absolute worst most frustrating event of having sensors that are battery powered but only last about 6 weeks before they die silently, no warning that they are dead at all! To find out your sensors are dead you have to look at the web dashboard to see which ones are dead. OH, did I mention that the "alarm" doesn't even have an alarm sound! That is right, it just beeps a hub inside the house which sounds about as loud as the volume of your cell phone ringer turned all the way up, thats it!I spent months emailing back and forth with Scout support who told me an update would be coming and would fix the battery and connectivity issues (among other problems).... I let too long pass and no support from Scout, no actual update, nothing.... When I complained they told me I could return them to Scout for a refund but ONLY if I had purchased directly from Scout.... Amazon said my order was past the allotted time to return for a refund, all because I believed their support that a fix was coming.After almost 2 years of dealing with this garbage I finally ripped it all out and threw it in the trash! A complete and total waste of money. If you think I'm exaggerating, please look at their own community support forum https://community.scoutalarm.com/t/battery-and-zigbee-firmware-updates/548 Notice that this support thread started in APRIL of 2015 and is still being populated by people who were promised and update and given NOTHING.Hundreds of unhappy users asking where Scout support is, why there are no updates, timelines on updates. etc... This was the worst $800 I've wasted in a long time. I love to support small businesses and wanted to give them time to reconcile but have been left with a product that from day 1 never did what it was supposed to do, lied to by the company, and eventually gave up and threw my money in the trash!

This seems like an amazing product. I like it thus far. The built-in siren is weak, but external sirens can be hooked up by the clever among us using the IFTTT interface, which I love. The monitoring program is reasonably affordable if you chose to use it, and setup is insanely easy. The app integrates seamlessly and is well designed. The product also looks great. Grab a few extra sensors for things like your garage. If you're the "maker" type, the possibilities for integrating this with your own "internet of things" with arduino, ethernet and IFTTT are literally endless. Now, here are the cons...This system CHEWS through batteries. Scout is nice and sends batteries to you for free, but it's way too power hungry. This might be fixable through software, but I haven't seen any updates. Also, the motion sensor now refuses to pair, so I'm a little lost on that one. It's also not immediately apparent if there's any way to completely re-set and re-activate the system to factory defaults.Also, as of late, the system has been triggering false alarms on the door panel (the one with the keyfob reader) As far as I can tell, there are no changes to the actual mechanical system of magnets and whatever. They've been taped in the same place for well over a year and have not moved. The batteries are also new in the door panel.My final thoughts are that the wireless aspect of this system is a non-starter in it's current form. Unfortunately, for ultimate reliability, a hard-wired system is going to be the best. I think Scout should keep trying - The app and all that stuff is great, and the infrastructure is there, but I just think the hardware isn't reliable enough (or diagnosable enough) to really have it make the cut for anything serious.It's better than nothing, but I'd definitely recommend having a camera system so you can verify false alarms remotely.