Hack 83. Workarounds for Home Alarm System Monitoring  
Many home alarm systems are monitored remotely via telephone line, and you need not necessarily give this up when you switch to Skype. Works with: Windows version of Skype. Many home alarm systems are monitored over a phone line. At the risk of stating the obvious, if you intend to retain at least one regular phone line, make sure it is the one your alarm system uses.  | Cutting the phone line that feeds your alarm might set it off! After all, how is the alarm to tell the difference between you and a burglar? However, this becomes an issue only if you are configuring Skype to reuse the phone lines and wiring throughout your home (see Chapter 3 for Skype configurations that might make this necessary). So, before you cut any wires, get organized, do your homework (for example, read the manual for your alarm system), talk with your alarm monitoring service, and then (and only then) cut your wires. |
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Even if you decide to use Skype exclusively for phone services, this does not necessarily mean that you have to do without remote alarm monitoring. In Chapter 3, I discussed several configurations for Skype that effectively leave a dial tone on your existing phone copper wiring. If, in addition, you are a SkypeIn and SkypeOut subscriber, there's no reason why your alarm monitoring service can't dial in to your alarm system for monitoring purposes, and likewise, there's no reason why your alarm can't dial out to your alarm monitoring service in an emergency. Chances are that all you need is for your alarm monitoring service to know your SkypeIn number and for the alarm to be reprogrammed to use any special new prefix needed to dial out through SkypeOut. Note that during a power cut, your alarm will lose its connection to your alarm monitoring service. For readers who are fully replacing their existing phone service with Skype, but who want to retain alarm monitoring services, this step-by-step checklist might prove useful: Read the manual for your alarm system and learn how to reprogram it to dial out using the Skype dial format. If you don't have a manual, or if this is beyond your comfort zone, ask your alarm company to reprogram the alarm for you. Before doing anything else, you have to be convinced that monitoring your alarm system using Skype is doable. If it isn't, think again. If it is, proceed. Tell your alarm monitoring service that your phone numbers are about to change. Ask them to stop monitoring until you've notified them to start again. Cancel your regular phone service and then, if necessary, cut the incoming phone wires so that Skype can reuse the copper wiring in your home. Be careful to cut only the incoming phone wires (that is, cut only the wires that connect you to the outside world) and not the wires that connect your alarm system to the copper wires of your home phone wiring. Connect and configure Skype so that it puts a dial tone on the copper phone wires throughout your home (see Figure 10-7). Reprogram your alarm to use SkypeOut when dialing out. This will entail using the correct country code and prefix (for example, to have your alarm call your monitoring service using SkypeOut, it may have to be reprogrammed to dial something like +12035551212, rather than 5551212, which may have been the case previously). Call your alarm monitoring service, provide them with your SkypeIn number, and test the new setup. Tell your alarm monitoring service to start monitoring again.
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