Boltek Smart Home Protection System

Your on your own with this system – Don't expect any support of any kind with this kit. You get what you pay for. It will do the job. It will tell you if there is movement or a sensor trips. You will have to figure out how to make it do that yourself with the minimal instructions. Setup is a pain in the preverbal. The app won't play nicely, it won't find the system, you'll end up… Read more

resetting it several times before it will work. Red Shield won't want to know you or even provide any acknowledgement of emails. They're located in some apartment in Hong Kong, which is probably just a overflowing post box, enough said.

The system has a really annoying feature, something called a heartbeat sensor. When it loses contact with one of it's sensors, it'll beep incessantly and you cannot mute it. It will do this at all random hours of the day or night, like at 3 in the morning. You can't turn it off, you can't mute it, and the instruction manual doesn't even mention what the heartbeat function even does or what it means. It's there purely just to annoy anyone that is unfortunate enough to buy this heap of junk.

Not worth it – Bought this as an alternative for home alarm system. It is cheap to run at $299, but then I added extra sensors and sirine, ended up spent $400 plus. The set up was confusing at start, but then once you understand it easy to run, but the app has failed numerous times. The sensor trigerred by itself and alarm went off annoys the hell out of my neighbours, and we cant turn it off from wifi as the app failed. Show details

Somewhat confusing at times, but cheap and works as a dumb alarm ONLY – Jaycar currently sells this system for $299. It contains a smart panel, motion sensor, key fob, and two window/door sensors. Everything is wireless and battery-operated (the smart panel plugs into the power but has 4-hour battery backup) and mounts using adhesive pads so this is perfect for renters. Additional sensors, key fobs, or external siren… Read more

can be purchased and added. The smart panel itself is an internal siren.

It was quite easy to set up: plug in the smart panel and turn it on, and then trigger the other sensors and they will automatically get added. Wireless range was fine for my small home, but the keyfob signal doesn't travel far so I have to be pretty close to my front door. The motion sensors only pick up motion within about 2-2.5 metres which isn't brilliant, but you can add as many as you like.

The optional external siren works okay, but it's just one of those high-pitched whistling sirens like when a shop worker opens a glass cabinet albeit a lot louder. I would have preferred a deep honking sound. I have reservations about whether the tamper sensor will go off if the siren is bashed from the front and I don't think it'll last long against a crowbar, so you should try to place it in a protected location like on a roof gable (however you'll be changing the batteries roughly yearly...).

The system can be connected to your wifi network WITHOUT needing an Ethernet port at any point - great - and then you can control the system remotely from an app. It will e-mail or SMS you (charges apply for SMS) whenever there is an incident. Setup is a pain! When you register an account it will always tell you your email address has already been used, and it does not tell you the password rules (8 characters, at least one uppercase letter and one digit required), and your registration email will probably go into your SPAM folder. Red Shield's customer support centre never got back to me with this, I had to figure it out myself.

It also took me a few tries to connect the panel to the wifi network. Make sure all letters are input as uppercase! And do not try to use the web-based interface for wifi connection, this is a red herring and will not help you to set up the app.

After I finally figured it out and got it connected, it has worked reliably so far and I have no problems at all.

As a "dumb" security system it is great. As a smart system it needs some bugfixes to make it more user-friendly to set up, the app stores are full of bad reviews from people who couldn't figure it out and gave up. Red Shield needs to take customer service seriously, it doesn't appear that they do. Otherwise, if you need a security system and don't want to pay a lot for it or need one you can take with you to your next home (i.e. renters), this works well.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, although the panel is connected to wifi and does communicate with Red Shield servers, the Boltek app now does not see the system. The app is gone from Google Play and the new Boltek X app does not install on my modern phone. It is now a dumb alarm and I can't even check the battery level of the sensors. I bought a camera last year and it wouldn't connect to the app and had to return it. Also, another poster mentioned the annoying heartbeat beeping - this happens to me too at random times and it's very annoying.

I wouldn't recommend this except as a dumb alarm now, and even then probably not.