I already have a safe but for important documents and I can put all my external HDDs in there, but a laptop wont fit. I feel like getting a bigger safe wouldnt make sense because then I’d use it just for my laptop and have all that extra space in there. I’ve tried coming up with hidden boards but cant find a good place for it.

Any other suggestions?

I currently have a Ring home alarm system with 1 indoor & 1 outdoor stickup cam. I’m a renter so need a camera that’s wireless. The outdoor camera is not suiting my needs & I would like to upgrade, but I’m also on a budget. The cam covers the area behind my attached garage & is mounted underneath an overhang. I would like to keep this mounting position but if solar is a must to alleviate the battery life issue I can move it. I live in an apartment community, so there’s quite a bit of motion that’s detected. I have the motion detection area set as small as possible but there’s a lot of foot & vehicle traffic. Here’s a quick list of needs and/or where the stick up cam is not suiting those needs:

1. The Ring camera’s battery drains after 2 weeks, sometimes sooner. I have it set to record for the longest length available & pretty frequently, but if I change that setting, it doesn’t really work for what I need it for. See next point.

2. My main reason for having the camera besides general security is because I’m a DV survivor, & my ex has engaged in verbal abuse & physical intimidation at my home. This week he did it when he dropped off one of our kids – most of this occurred inside the garage. Yes, I know I can get a PO, & yes, I know I request the drop off location to not be at my home. I need proof to do these things, & in this case, the Ring camera didn’t pickup any of it because it had been tripped by another car driving by a minute or so earlier, and was further complicated by the fact that the battery was nearly drained even though I had just charged it 10 days prior.

3. Even with the longest recording time & most frequent motion checks, this is the 2nd time an incident has not been caught on camera because of these time constraints.

4. The video & audio quality are awful. One incident that was “caught” was garbage because nothing could be heard.

5. Basically I need a constant recording. Eufy cams were recommended by my therapist but she said they had 24/7 recordings with flags for motion, but the smaller cams I looked at don’t have that? She’s now on vacation so can’t check a specific model.

Any recommendations are appreciated. I need to upgrade ASAP. Thanks!

Me: Your cameras and hub stop working after a month or two
Vivint: That’s normal. We recommend restarting our equipment every month.
Me: So wait, if I don’t baby your product and restart it regularly, it just errors out and sits dead?
Vivint: Unfortunately that’s just the state of the technology.

After assessing the conversation I thought: No it’s not the technology! You can either make the software and hardware more resilient, or make it restart itself on a timer. The technology is fine, your product just sucks!

I switched to Vivint because I was told they’re better than ADT, but it’s been same-old-same-old and they even have fewer features (for example, only one alarm zone and limited user permission controls, so I can’t give my tenant control over the basement separately from the main floor).

Their doorbell camera has to be restarted with the breaker box (shut off power to that room) or with a special screwdriver, and it dies a few times a year (no alert, it just stops responding). When it or the HUD decide to start fritzing out, a hard reset is the only cure. When working, sometimes the doorbell decides to alert me 30 minutes after it’s pressed, instead of on time. They explored my house to try to find something in the way that would interrupt it, and made all sorts of excuses. None of my other devices have these issues (losing connection, dying after 60 days of not being reset, general fussiness), just the security equipment.

It’s a good thing this company doesn’t make medical devices or they’d be killing patients, like the Therac-25 did. Oh wait, they’re a security company whose product is supposed to keep people safe. I’ll bet their terms of service etc are very carefully written to shirk any responsibility if there’s a break-in and their dumpster product does nothing.

You’d think security equipment would be more reliable? But I had many similar problems with ADT, and I wonder if they both just have the same supplier and try to pretend to be different.

So here’s my big question: Is Vivint uniquely terrible in this area, or are all security companies going to be about the same? (I live in Utah, btw).

Devices that need to reset themselves every 30 days seems like a solvable problem (or just fix the bug that makes them die), but maybe none of the companies that make this equipment can be bothered with reliability — it’s only your security equipment, after all.

Hi all,
I’ve got 2 Vista-32FB panels and a Vista-100 panel. I’m trying to setup a relay to know the armed/disarmed state of each panel using the J2 connector and the open/close status pin. I was able to sucessfully set this up on one of the 32FB and the 100 panel but I can’t get the second 32FB panel to behave the same as the others. It seems to be stuck as always high, except for a second when the there’s a system reset in progress.

I have fields set as follows…
3*19 = 0
3*20 = 0

What else am I missing?