A Buyer’s Guide to Alarm Control Panels

If you’re considering having an alarm system installed but you don’t know which of the control panels to choose then you’re in the right place because this article will explain all about the different panels.

We’ll also tell you an alternative, just in case you want to look elsewhere.

Visonic Powermaster PM-10

First up is the Visonic Powermaster PM10 panel. To call this our entry level or bottom of the range panel really isn’t doing it justice. it’s got room for 32 different devices and eight different users on it and that’s going to be sufficient for the vast majority of houses. I can’t think of one that it wouldn’t be suitable for. Maybe Buckingham Palace? In any event it’s a decent panel with lots of capacity. You’ve got a standard rubber keypad on it and a standard LCD 2 line display, so fairly basic in that respect admittedly, but we’ve installed hundreds of these and it’s a real solid performer.

If that’s not what you’re after, then maybe look at the HKC Quantum 70, very similar specifications with this, not one that we install regularly ourselves but very much worth a look at.

Qolsys PM

Next up is the Qolsys PM,  this is brand new out, it’s only been available in this country for about six months or so, and rather than the standard two line LCD and rubber keypad, it has a touchscreen, so it’s intuitive to operate with swipes and taps, like you’re use with a smartphone or tablet.or anything like that. The specification is again big enough for the majority of houses

(you know, Buckingham Palace aside), so it’s got plenty of capacity, but the real big thing about it is this touchscreen display, which I really love.

There’s not an exact equivalent of that anywhere but Pyronix’s Enforcer control panel can also come with an Android tablet to use as a controller as well, so that’s kind of, sort of in that same ballpark.

Dahua Airshield

Next up is the Dahua Air Shield. This little baby doesn’t have a screen or a keypad to control it. Instead you use a smartphone app to program and control this system. It’s got bags of capacity, 150 devices can be programmed to it, that includes 64 different users and up to six sirens — so maybe this one is suitable for Buckingham Palace? I don’t know. The really good thing about it, and the reason we’ve added it to our range, is that we can also integrate CCTV cameras. Dahua is one of the big two CCTV manufacturers in the world and we can have their cameras and this alarm system all working with the same app.

As an equivalent to that, I’m going to go for the Pyronix Enforcer again. Pyronix are part of HikVision, the other one of the big two CCTV manufacturers in the world, and they again can integrate Hikvision cameras with the Pyronix alarm system in the one app.

Qolsys

Lastly I’m going to talk about the main Qolsys system. This is more than just an alarm system, it can integrate cameras from alarm.com, you can integrate thermostats, smart locks, lighting, anything that can be controlled electronically as you can integrate smart plugs and relays.

I absolutely love this system and it’s brilliant, it has the same touchscreen as the Qolsys PM that we talked about higher up the article. so again it’s controlled with swipes and taps, and you get a different screen on the control panel for each of the different subsections, so you have one for the alarm, one for locks, one for cameras etc.

You can also program all sorts of automations into it, based on time, weather, sunrise and sunset.

The only real equivalent system which I can recommend for this is Ajax, which again has got all sorts of different devices but Ajax doesn’t have a control panel with a screen to it, in that respect it’s similar to the Dahua Air Shield, so it/s only controlled with the smartphone app.

So there you go, that’s a whistle stop tour of all the control panels that we offer and an equivalent if you wanted to look elsewhere.