Customer Reviews

FGD0400 - Sensaphone 400

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great product. My parents used one 20 years ago that still works. The new one is being used to monitor house temperature 10 miles from my house to save on checkin trips. Spendy but cheap insurance if you can prevent a house piping freeze up at -40 degrees.

First off, I LOVE the peace of mind and security I get with my SensaPhone 400. A great product, easy to use, expandable or use as is out-of-box, if you know what you want and this covers it, I say this is the way to go. It is a bit pricey, but like another reviewer said, the almost four-hundred is cheap insurance if it saves you just one water leak, or similar disaster for a remote monitored location. Get past that, and you'll agree this is great. It is fairly easy to use and set-up, I am a professional property manager so I upped the stakes and use these for a lot more than I believe most users do just for the remote call-in to check temperature. I also link to entry points for alarm-type notifications, of course use to monitor unoccupied temperatures, I use the remote function to turn thermostats up & down, water alarms, etc. Wiring and accessories can get more costly and complicated, but nothing that can't be done and does it well. The 2 biggest "I wish they'd change" thoughts are: 1.) ANYONE calling in to the monitored number hears the initial system status menu. Now, if you program your system correctly, they cannot change any settings without your set password, but still, I think it could have been programmed to pick-up/answer and give a very short message like a prompt to enter your password, THEN give you the entire system status, rather than have all that blabbed to EVERY caller. Yes you can set the # of rings, etc so every caller might not stay on the ringing line long enough to hear this, but still, I think it could have easily been programmed with this alternative option. 2.) this is my biggest grip, and I asked their customer service via a e-mailed in link/question - but never received an answer - it is almost impossible to distinguish, over the phone, the voice-menu man's voice of ON vs. OFF. "The power is ooooo???,, the Output is oooo??. The ON sounds like a trailing-off, OFF, when you do hear a definite OFF, then you can finally make-out and hear the difference, but it is most confusing - would have liked a different tone in OFF vs ON, or say ON, O-N, or OFF, O-F-F. I can live with it now that I know they sound almost identical, but it is such a great product, and if these two items were addressed (and of course they gave me a new one for free in return for reviewing, of course ;) !) I would have given it 5-stars.

All in all, great product, IF you have a land-line, can follow directions and are somewhat handy to advanced to utilize all the functionality this has to offer. Not a lot of competitor products, so you kind of have to get over the initial cost hurdle, but I tell you, for the peace of mind and ability to call-in whenever to satisfy yourself that all is ok, PRICELESS.

This is a very popular autodialer used at water and wastewater pump stations and plants around the country. I have purchased several of them over the years. The manufacturer has been producing autodialers for years and looks to be in the business for the long haul. All autodialers are complicated to configure but this one is easiest of the 5-6 brands I have used. You can talk into it and it will repeat your recorded message over the phone when any of the 4 or 8 (depending on model) alarm channels are triggered. It will call out if the 115VAC power is out. All the callouts have time delays that you can modify. You enter a phone tree of telephone numbers that it will call round-robin until someone answers and punches in a response from their telephone. I've tried two lower cost autodialers and they were either not reliable or they were too complicated to program. I've tried 4-5 more expensive autodialers ($1500 - $2500) and they were no better than this unit and some were so complicated to program that they require a service technician to make any changes. The manual that comes with the Sensaphone is easy to read and organized well.

I had to replace my old Sensaphone Cottage Watcher since it can only call using pulse technology while all the phone services use tone technolgy. This newer Sensaphone 400 has alot more options than the older Cottage Watcher. It is fairly easy to program, however you do need the keep the manual handy when reprograming it. It is not that consistant/intuitive for programing. For the most part, the default setting were very simliar to the Cottage Watcher set up. The only major changes I made to the settings had to do with the sound alarm settings. For the sound sensitivity, after some experimenting, I found that level 1 (default is 32, max 160), worked best for my alarm. The High Sound Alarm Recognition Time of 8 seconds did not seem to work. It initially took alot longer than 8 seconds for the Sensaphone to start calling. I changed the time to 6 seconds and it took alittle more than 10 seconds for it the start calling. I find this pecular, but acceptacle. Do not assume that the default values are good for your house alarm. Test each of the settings.

I have only had the product for a month but so far it has put my mind at ease TREMENDOUSLY. I have always been so concerned about losing power and freezing pipes and now I just pick up the phone and the product tells me what the temp in the house is. So far it has been accurate as I've checked. Well worth the $$.