When is an alarm signal actually sent to COPS?

@duffy_4 during the entry delay if the base is destroyed, no alarm, no signal, however, there are several practical and easy ways to address this.

For us, all of our intrusion sensors are set to instant trigger, except the one entry door. To address this for home mode, we are in bed on the 2nd floor, don't expect anyone to come in. Setting on entry and exit delay is 0. In effect, the one entry door is on "instant trigger".  For away mode, the one door is set 45 sec exit but the entry is reduced to 30 sec. And good luck finding the base in 30 seconds. Very confident system is very effective.

I do know two others that have entry to 0 for away mode too, and use the SS phone app to turn off the system before they enter. Using the key fob would work too.  Sorry but too manually intensive for my philosophy of "ME" (Minimal Effort) :-)

Wow, I have to say that is a serious flaw in the system. The best systems will send the "pending alarm" to the monitoring center(s) right away so if the base or panel is destroyed, the pending alarm will go to a full alarm status after the entry delay has expired. Frankly, that should be easy to implement so why SimpliSafe has not engineered its service that way is rather puzzling.

So the solutions are to hide the base to make it hard to find within 30 seconds. So if you hide the base unit, you will not see the color indicators on the unit, you probably will not hear the voice responses and the siren will most likely be harder to hear if the base is well hidden.

The next option is to set the entry sensors for immediate trigger. That is sort of a solution, but in the case of my home and one of my children's home, you will trigger a motion detector first (just added a motion detector at my house) before getting to the keypad so those two critical sensors cannot go to instant trigger. In addition, I can see an increase in false alarms, especially in homes with kids, due to forgetting the system is armed home and opening a window or door and immediately triggering an alarm.

I would really like to hear from Johnny at SimpliSafe to get the company's thoughts on this and why they did not implement immediate pending alarm signals to the monitoring centers which can prevent "smash and grab."

Captain, thanks again for your thoughts and response.

Always like that, "should be easy to...". Especially easy to say when your arse isn't on the line for making it happen. LOL. Nothing personal against you, I just ways get a kick out of "it should be easy to..." comments.

With the Captain's input and lack of input from Johnny and SS, we had to rethink how we implemented the two systems. We are going to add some additional hardware, change settings on most sensors to immediate trip, and change the location of the base. Hope this is going to be OK going forward. I also hope SS changes the way alarms are sent so others can keep it simple.

@duffy_4 remember, I have the advantage of having 2 generations of SS systems over the past 9 years.  You will configure your own system over time many different ways to fine tune it.  Example: Two office drawers and three closets will alarm ( in away mode only)  if some intruder gets by my other "layers" of sensors.

Best of luck with your new system!