What's the current best security system for DIY + Insteon?

Subject says it all for the most part. I moved into a new house about ten months back, and the neighborhood is just sketchy enough I'd rather have an alarm system, particularly when I'm traveling and my wife is home alone.

The house is partly prewired: I've got a bundle in the basement with four 22/4 wires and a Cat.6. Two of the 22/4s end in gang boxes for keypads (back door and master bedroom), one goes to the ceiling of the open living area, and another to the ceiling of the unfinished basement (no idea why). The Cat.6 ends in a gang box in an A/C closet upstairs, and I assume is meant for a cellular communicator or something.

It used to look as if Elk was the way to go for integration, but it's not super DIY friendly and costs several times as much as competitors, and then I'd be gambling that money on my ability to pick up the Elk plug-in and get it working again.

Any advice?

[jay (support)]

From what we've seen, the DSC systems are the most DIY friendly. And there's a great 3rd party plugin that integrates them into Indigo. And since Indigo supports Insteon natively, there you go!

+1 for DSC and Travis' great plugin.
(However, I paid a professional installer to install much of the DSC so that motion detectors and multiple keypads would be hard wired and not need battery replacement. Have added some window and other wireless sensors since then, DIY).

+ 1 on DSC as well.


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+1...


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Anyone have experience with the newer DSC models? They still have the PowerSeries, but now Power Series Neo as well as some all-wireless WiFi enabled version called DSC Touch.

I'm also about to embark on an upgrade. I'm assuming that the hardwired solutions are going to be far more reliable than the one-way 433MHz systems, and if I wanted to go wireless, I could always just add more ZWave stuff.

Afaik there's no integration available for the neo series and indigo. Last post from an alarm company recommended avoiding neo anyway, apparently lots of issues. I'd just get a powerseries 1864 or 1832 and use that!

And yes, hardwiring is preferable as the wireless motion units shutdown when there's lots of activity, so aren't reliable for things like triggers in indigo.