Customer Reviews

Skylink AD-433S Emergency Dialer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I bought this from the Home Security Store (a company to avoid if you appreciate quality customer service!) and it seemed to install and set up quite easily. I was surprised how easy it was to program. I wish it would take a longer outgoing message but it is limited. My suggestion is to just give your name and address and a SHORT message or you'll run out of time. It took me almost 10 times to record a message, and finally I had to WRITE my message and READ IT really fast. At first it would not dial when triggered. This was due to being hooked up inline with my cable modem and computer line. After several experiments I finally got it to work. What I had to do was hook up BOTH phone lines in the unit to a splitter! Otherwise it would not dial. I found it does work as it should. BUT, as with ALL SkyLink products I've purchase, I get DAILY false alarms!! I'm STILL trying to figure out the false alarm issue. Even with the motion sensors turned off I still get false alarms. But hey, it calls my cell phone when triggered. Only thing is how frustrating it is to drive all the way across town to check on my house only to find out it was yet another false alarm. Gee, I distinctly recall the old fable about the boy who cried wolf! After too many false alarms dialings, no friend or neighbor will ever respond if I'm out of town.

Not sure if I would recommend this or not. If I never had a false alarm dialing sent to my cell phone I would highly recommend it. But until I remedy the false alarm issue, I can only say it is worth the low price but not worth much more.

About the best thing about it is that it is triggered by ALL sensors and triggers used with other SkyLink alarms, AND the fact that it can be used alone or with the alarm on. So, you need not set the alarm unit for this dialer to work.

I use it with the skylink security system and it works. I only hooked up the main control panel and not the individual sensors. This way the dialer is only activated when my alarm is tripped and therefore I have not had any false dials. The only tricky part was hooking up my phone line provided through my modem by my cable company. There is no logic to it but you need a splitter to split the phone line. I still don't even quite understand why that's the only way it worked but thanks to a post on Amazon I was able to hook it up properly. When I bought this system, I knew that I would have to tweak it to work right because I did not want to pay any security company a monthly fee. This is the best alternative to that.

It dials the numbers that I have selected, the message is kind of fuzzy but it is understandable. Mostly, it doesn't matter because the people I have chosen to dial know exactly what the message means.

I used the single input to hardwire a normally closed circuit (magnetic door contacts for example) to trigger the dialer. I would have given this product 15 stars if it had a hardwired output (siren for example). You can buy wireless inputs/outputs if you want, but I didn't, so I cannot comment on them. I actually put magnetic contacts on the back of coin slots on laundry machines that were getting broken into. When anyone pulls the coin slot out it automatically dials two cell phone #'s I programmed in. Caught one so far! Good reliable product (don't know about wireless accessories though) and good price. You do need to know a little about phone wiring, but the instructions do a good job of walking you through it. The phone line needs to go to the dialer first (then to other phones) if you want it to override other calls.

I bought the complete 1000 system. Everything still works EXCEPT the dialer. The temp sensor needed relocating a curcuit to stop it calling every day (customer service did help with that) but now the dialer is totally dead! i bought a different brand motion detector and temp detector and still use the other parts of the 1000 system for its alarm function only.

Not only is the separation between the detectors and the dialer limited to one room, but to make matters worse this thing dials at random every four to six hours. This whole product line is worse than useless actually. A perfect example of a great idea with poor execution. Take your time and your money elsewhere.

The Skylink AD-433S dialer came with conflicting instructions, and despite three phone conversations with their tech department, we could not get this to dialer to work properly. I finally sent it back to their "repair" office, and it cost me an additinal $19.00 in postage. I still waiting for some response from the company.

If you need high quality dialer then stay away from this device. You will have hard time and frustration with it, but at the end it will work (from testing).
Nothing is high tech in this device... the antenna is cheap, just a hard wire that is bent and comes off easily.
Emergency message is hard to record, i never able to play it back. In my situation, I set emergency number as my cell phone number so when I see the call from home, I know something happens at home. But the emergency message never kick on, so if you want it to call 911, make sure you have caller id.
I have success to call out by using Skype VOIP, but I have to change Skype send key from * to # because Skylink AD-433S uses * as pause.
I got the whole system SC001 setup, and it works ok, but I am not giving it to my parents, or someone I care because I don't think it's 100% reliable.

I defenitely do not recommend this dialer. Even though it has a quality passed sticker, the unit had a broken solder at the base of the antenna and did not record nothing but noise. I doubt vey much it was tested.

A look at the circuit board showed a lot of cold solders which is totally unacceptable for a consumer product like this and I would guess is the source of the problems that everyone reports with the unit.

The first time I was testing, it quit and the screen went blank. I had to take the battery out and start again. Skylink should not include batteries because half of them arrived DOA. The casing is cheap

The construction is shoddy, the controls are non-intuitive and the unit I received did not function. The support from the manufacturer is by email only and not very helpful.