Honeywell Lyric Alarm System Install

Last year, my car was broken into while it sat in my driveway. I thought I lived in a very safe neighborhood. I'm not in the city limits and got complacent and left the car unlocked. The next morning, my wife noticed the glove box open and the car had been ransacked. There wasn't anything in the car and nothing was taken. However, I lost my sense of security. I responded by installing a security camera. I felt a little safer, but a security camera isn't going to call the police. We decided to get a full-blown monitored alarm system.

Choosing your alarm

There are so many systems out there, where do you start? I knew that I wanted a monitored alarm system. This means I'm paying a company to sit by a computer all day and wait for my alarm to activate. If it does, they are going to call me and the police. I didn't want to spend a fortune and it had to be a system that could be installed in a finished home.

Pictured above are, more or less, the choices in my area. There isn't a huge difference between these security companies. They all monitor your house 24/7 and call the police if something happens. Most of them control "smart home" devices, Simplisafe does not. Simplisafe is the only one that offers monitoring without a contract. The others require a 24 month to 36 month contract, or are tied to your cable contract. The first thing I did was look at the price. Simplisafe is the least expensive. Monitoring starts at $14.99 per month. The others range from $28.99 to $39.99 per month and go up from there. Most of these companies charge you for the equipment and also have an installation fee. Next, I looked at the equipment. They all work, but if I'm going to have something hanging in my house, I want it to look nice. Honestly, all of these look horrible, except Smithville. While the majority of these have a keypad that looks 10 years old, the Smithville system is a 7" touchscreen that looks "new".

I really like the Smithville system, but I don't want to spend $28.99 a month for monitoring plus their installation fee. I did a little research and found that Smithville uses a Honeywell Lyric security system. And even better, The Lyric system can be purchased directly from retailers.

I found a Lyric package on Amazon that included the control panel, 3 door/window sensors, motion sensor and a keyfob for $460. I added a second keyfob for $45 and used a $70 Amazon gift card. This brought the total to $435. I decided to buy this package and look for monitoring on my own or self-monitor, if I couldn't find a service.

The same day I ordered, I recieved a phone call from the Amazon vendor, MonitorU. He asked me if I would like to have it monitored or if I wanted to self-monitor. He sold monitoring packages through Sentry Net starting at $9.99 per month. I ordered a silver package for $19.99 per month. This package offers the 24/7 monitoring. They notify the police if the alarm is activated. The silver package sends notices to my smart phone or email and sends me a picture of the person that disarms the alarm. An unexpected bonus was MonitorU completely set up the alarm system before shipping. This included adding the sensors and keyfob to the control panel, labeling them and setting up my account with Honeywell for their Total Connect 2.0 mobile app (the same mobile app that Guardian uses). When I recieved the alarm, all I would have to do is put it on the wall.