SIM card & control room

Let us start with the SIM card

This can be placed in the Hub as a backup channel. The main connection to the Cloud / control room that is used is always the Ethernet (internet) cable from your router to the Hub. If the internet works normally at home, the SIM card will not be used.

If for any reason the internet at home no longer works, the connection to the Cloud can be maintained by the data connection of the SIM card. The messages generated by the Hub (e.g. a burglary report) will continue to be sent to your phone or control room.

Even if you do not use a SIM card as a backup, and your internet at home is down, the alarm will continue to function normally. Only the alarm will then not get through to your phone or to an incident room. The siren does sound.

What is an M2M SIM card

There are many providers that make it look like you need a special M2M SIM card for the Hub. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Every SIM card from any provider works!

The only thing you need to pay attention to is whether the provider in question supports the network on which the Hub works. For example, Hub 1 and Hub 2 only have a 2G connection, also known as the “old” GSM network.

The Hub 2 Plus has several antennas including 4G / LTE, so with this Hub 2 Plus you never have to worry that a random provider no longer transmits the right signal. With the other Hubs, we therefore advise you to choose a provider that supports the 2G network.

What does a SIM card in the Hub cost?

Now that you know that every SIM card is suitable, it makes sense to buy a SIM card at the source, and not from an alarm system vendor, because an extra link between them means extra costs, because that link also wants to earn some money. (And that every month again) The source of a SIM card is, as everyone knows, the provider itself.

See what the cheapest subscription with the smallest data bundle costs with your mobile provider.

How much data a Hub consumes per month

An average system consumes only 35MB of data per month. The above data bundles are therefore all too large, but because the provider assumes that you normally use the SIM card to really use the internet, there are no smaller data bundles anymore.

Do you really need a SIM card?

It’s up to you whether you want to use a SIM card as a backup communication channel with the Cloud. The fact is that the Cloud continuously checks whether the Hub is available at your home. If you only use your connection via the router and it fails, you will be immediately notified on your smartphone in the form of a message: “Hub unreachable”. In other words: Even if you do not insert a SIM card, you will hear directly on your mobile phone that the internet no longer works, and you can look for the cause.

The control room

By default, all notifications from your alarm system are received on your own smartphone, and possibly the phones of your housemates or family. In response to these reports, you or a family member could take action, such as calling the police.

However, if you never want to call the police yourself, you can take out a subscription at an incident room for a fee. This will respond to almost every report. We say almost specifically because there are rules attached to when an incident room can call the police. If only one detector detects movement, the owner will always be called before the police. Only if several detectors are activated within a certain period of time, or when being able to view surveillance camera images, can a control room send the police directly.

Is an control room of interest to you?

That depends on your profession and self-reliance. If, during working hours, you or another family member can respond to any incoming reports, you will be able to call the police yourself if necessary. If you have neighbours who are often at home, it is also possible to inform them, fully automatically. If you do not have these options, an incident room can be a good addition.

What does a control room cost?

Once again, there is a price difference between choosing a control room yourself, or arranging it via the alarm system vendor. An extra link between them means a higher monthly subscription price.

If you choose an alarm centre yourself, the price varies between 10~20 euros per month. If you let an alarm system vendor arrange this, you can assume double that, and that every month, as long as the subscription lasts.

Or let us do it for a one-off fee, more about this later.

How to choose your own alarm centre

That is actually very simple. We take the AJAX alarm system as an example.

In the Hub settings, you can choose “control room list”. And then you will see hundreds of different control rooms listed. By clicking on any name you can see in which countries they are active. Select the monitoring station of your choice, and click on “Send monitoring request”. In the Netherlands alone you can choose from ten different control rooms.

As soon as the request has been sent, a member of staff from the control centre in question will contact you to activate the link.

How to link an control room

The staff member of the control room will provide you with the necessary details. These can again be entered in the Hub settings of the AJAX application, but this time you enter the data under the heading “control room”.

Help needed with linking up the control room

If you do not want to pay more to a control room every month, but for whatever reason you do not manage to make the link with the control room yourself, then call in our help. For a small one-off fee, we will arrange the link with the control centre of your choice. The contact with the control room will always go directly through you, so we will never be there as an extra link, and therefore never with extra costs.