My thoughts and suggestions on my system.

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Just wanted to give some feedback on my system. So far I've had it for about a month and its working out very well.

I purchased the system to help keep an eye on my apartment while on a navy deployment. This will help give my friend that'll be watching my apartment a heads up if something goes down, as well as reducing the amount of times he will need to stop by. It fulfills that role very well. That said, nothing is perfect, and the following are my suggestions to improve the system in future versions.

- Keypad: It really needs some way to adjust the contrast. To be fair, my apartment is rather dark, but I definitely have to look at it closely to see what it says (like when I was having a communications problem). I don't think my 62 year old mother would be able to read the display at all. If battery life is an issue, why not offer an optional version that plugs in to the wall and has some rechargeable batteries like the base station. I also think that my mother might have problems with the keypad's size. Making the display and buttons slightly larger might be a good idea in the future.

- Base station: The blue "armed" light is a tad bright at night. An option to turn just that status light off, but still keep the blinking alerts for when something is wrong would be good.

- Key chain remote: My car key somehow managed to turn around and poke that panic button at /just/ the right angle, and just the right length of time. I'm likely the rare weird case since i have way too many keys (think janitor keyring), and I had the newer smaller non-usb remote with the recessed buttons. Personally I blame the Ford motor company since that was my car key that stabbed the panic button. Perhaps you should look at the design on Honda car remotes... http://www.amazon.com/Keyless-Clicker-Honda-Yourself-Programming/dp/B000... ... the button is concave in design, making it harder to accidentally press. Not sure if that is a patented design, just a thought.

- Auxiliary siren: I ended up getting two of these, one for an external storage closet on my patio, and the other for the far side of my apartment. I'd love an inside version of the auxiliary siren that acts almost like the base station.. or rather, a second base station that doesn't transmit to dispatch but just acts as a slave to the main one (voice alerts, door chime, and not that harsh countdown beeping it does now).

- Alerts: Since I am in the navy, there are times where I will not be able to be reached via telephone. Even though my friend was added to my call list, it would be helpful to have an email alert that the system was tripped. I can see that this data is already on the simplisafe website, just an email would be more timely and convenient.

- Entry sensors: A thought for future versions of the system: I've seen systems that have a button behind the battery cover of wireless sensors. In that system's instance, it triggered an alert to the dispatch center that someone was tampering with it (perhaps trying to remove batteries or make the sensor follow the magnet when opening a door). Something like this, or at least a notification if a sensor unexpectedly drops off from the base station would be a security enhancement.

- Fire monitoring. Though not needed in my complex (we have a centrally managed alarm for that here that notifies the fire department automatically) I could see that being a good feature to have for those that don't. One of your competitors has a reduced price device that you stick next to your smoke detector(s), and it triggers when they go off.

- Water sensor: I live on the ground floor of an apartment complex, and also have a water heater in a closet not horribly far from my bedroom. Something that monitors for flooding might be useful. Something like that would also be good for people with basements... monitoring for a broken sump pump before half your basement floods.

So far I love the system, and It'll do what I need it to do nicely. My roommate at my last duty station had a "professional" system installed, and managing it was a pain (thanks in no part to the horrible alarm company that was contracted to monitor the thing at something like $35 a month + what it cost to have a phone line in her home. There was an instance where we tripped the alarm and ended up waiting for 45 minutes for their dispatch to call us back)

Thanks for what SimpliSafe does for me! You have an awesome product, and it just keeps getting better!