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Monday, September 28th, 2020 10:05 PM

If Burglar cuts power from outside house

Does the system know that power to the system was shut off and will it alert the police? Seems an easy way to subvert the alarm would be to either kill power to the house or cut the cable going into the house.

244 Messages

4 years ago

The system does have a battery backup that will last for several hours.  It will not notify the police, but will email/text you that power has been lost if you have monitoring.  The system communicates with monitoring via cellular service, so cutting any cable into the house will not disable it (but will disable all cameras).

The indoor cameras do not have battery backup. (Not sure about the doorbell camera.)

2.2K Messages

4 years ago

The indoor cameras don't have built in battery backup, but they do run off USB power, so you could plug them into a UPS with USB ports.  The doorbell does have a small battery, but I'm not sure if or how long it will run the camera.

1.3K Messages

4 years ago

Just to clarify, power outage in itself will not cause the monitoring service to dispatch police. However, if the system is triggered into an alarm state when the mains power is off/disconnected, the normal monitoring/dispatch process still works so long as there is cellular service and the backup batteries in the base still have juice left.

35 Messages

4 years ago

This system is specifically designed to not rely on electric power or any other physical connections that can be disabled from outside the house.  You should get a notification if power goes out, and if it stays out more than a few minutes the appropriate thing to do would be to contact the power company, not the police.

19 Messages

2 years ago

Someone on a neighborhood forum said that burglars like to open the electrical panel and throw the main breaker to disable alarms before breaking in. Here in California, electrical panels are accessible from outside the house for fire safety. Person recommended putting a sensor on your electrical panel.

I tried putting an entry sensor in my panel but the panel is all steel and makes a good Faraday shield. It blocks wireless signals so the sensor cannot communicate with the base station. Still trying to find a way to make this work.

731 Messages

@platelunch​ Throwing the main breaker would not disable a SimpliSafe system as it would recognize the power outage and switch to battery backup. As others have stated, the app would then notify you. If a burglar tried to enter the residence, the alarm would sound, and if you subscribe to paid monitoring, it will prompt police dispatch.

19 Messages

@tls​ Yes. I saw that. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks.

702 Messages

But also, as noted above, cutting power to your entire house still wouldn't prevent the base station from working due to battery back up. The scene you described doesn't work on SimpliSafe unless the internal battery has run completely down and if it has and the power is cut then none of your sensors, including the one you're trying to get to work in your electrical panel, are going to work.

Does that make sense?

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