Fell for a $200 cellular backup unit that was total junk

I was wiring up a house outside Austin last month and the customer wanted cellular backup on their panel. I had been seeing ads for this one brand called LinkSecure or something, touted as plug and play. I was skeptical because it was cheap compared to the Honeywell stuff I usually use, but the price won me over. Got it installed and it worked for exactly 2 days before dropping the signal. Customer called me frantic that the alarm couldn't dial out. I spent 4 hours troubleshooting, swapped SIM cards, moved the antenna, nothing helped. Finally I tore it out and put in a standard LTE unit from a known supplier and it fired right up. So yeah, never again trusting those no-name backup modules from random websites. Has anyone else gotten burned by cheap cellular alternatives?

1 comments

1 Comment

kevin_sullivan1d ago

Four hours troubleshooting a cellular unit? That's insane, I would've ripped that thing out after the first hour at most.

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