How the Alarm Industry Pulled off off a master Deception all over the Tri State in late 70s early 80s

 Yes Dictograph Corporation   in the 1970's and 80's  stopped and deterred many shop lifters and employee thieves By leasing to to merchants  for $350.00 a month a CCTV Camera system 

With its big 3 inch Lens and red blinking light it panned back and forth  or was sometimes stationary carefully keeping an eye on shoppers and employees . Some times just 1 camera or as many as 3 to 6 cameras in a business 

A warning sign  warned that a sophisticated anti theft camera system was deployed

Once a month a technician would come in with his special suitcase go up a ladder open it up pull up an antenna and talk to a person at central control who gave directions how to adjust the camera.  

Except the whole thing was a charade the cameras where Fake   and the technician talking to master control that was a tape recording he was talking to in the brief case .

One of the most best kept secrets in the industry  they pulled it off for several years till thieves figured out what was going on. 

I thought all along they where fake but i was in the industry and knew we had fakes I even put up some that looked real at the time and still some times use them strategically  along with real cameras to give the impression every area on a floor is being watched. 

Plus the trick worked it stopped a lot of problems by being a deterrent .

Of course many business now have cameras and many times they are broken or not working or are of such poor quality the images can not be used in court but all in all dummy cameras have done their job.

 

Another Honeywell /Resideo Fail Vista 20P Panels Chip changes Version all by itself

 The Resideo ? Honeywell Panels have been a very solid platform for several decades now but they have an inherent issue with their chip set . My self and other dealers have gone thru.

When the chip is made it has both the Vista 20P platform and First Alert  platform versions in it. 

You buy a 20P platform panel it should always be a 20P panel and should be able to upload and download info when customer needs it done over Alarmnet 360  ? WRONG

There are times the First Alert Platform comes active in panel  after a power surge and now you are stuck with a worthless panel unless you have the special dealer only  First Alert program personality disk to access it . 

Even if you do there is no way to reverse this action chip is now a First Alert chip.

Which is total complete bullshit . Just had this happen with a long time customers panel I put in 3 years ago.

Went to change access codes and now panel is worthless to me and customer and must be replaced.

This is total and complete Fu#%^king Nonsense .

Never ever heard of a manufacture putting more than one version type of software platform on a chip that can change itself .

So customer is stuck buying a new panel. which retail for around $ 300 to$ 500.00  depending where you are buying it from . 

SO CUSTOMER ONCE AGAIN GETS SCREWED BY RESIDEO AND HONEYWELL