If the new partitions are wired, then double check your PSU requirements too…
Bugger!!!
Seems keypads need to be replaced … NOTHING is simple. 
And they are seriously expensive as per Alarm Co’s pricing.
O my, it is true …
Need 5 of them … don’t think so.
A lot of times you can expand the existing alarm with zone expantions.
Do all the new have to be on the same alarm?
You could also add a new smaller alarm that just have a simple NO/NC output for when the alarm sounds and wire that as one sensor on your main alarm, but this is a bit more in depth DIY to do.
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Someone is coming to see me, as you say, there are options.
Security company quoted me on:
IDS 805 PANEL
IDS 805 KEYPAD
SUN OLARM
Turns out, Nov 2022 the circular went out, the IDS 805 is EOL.
The way I want it:
Main House, Partition 1, can “lock” it independently.
Flat, Partition 2, can “lock” it independently.
Now we have a 3rd area, renters, that have no business but their side, hence the 3rd Partition.
Later a 4th partition, same story, if we do expand there too.
Titbit:
The siren is inside the house … so when it goes off it is quite epic. EVERYONE is awake and scrambling to “who knows where”. Quite fun to watch the faces. Not so much for the person who forgot to disarm. 
Ps. Why not outside the house, the siren?
- Who of us cares when sirens go off … no one is going to run to “our rescue” now are they? Just ticks off the neighbors if it goes on and on and on.
- Inside the house, a whole new story … EVERYONE is awake.
- And it is annoying as hell … cannot think straight. So hopefully it deters someone inside already. I mean, it is LOUD, you cannot hear the cops chasing down the street to “one’s rescue”.
I installed an Ajax fully wireless system myself - been really reliable and very easy to use/setup. Would recommend!
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Thanks.
Quick Google … pretty much the same prices as Paradox. We have Wifi sensors already.
Three things I look at:
- We have no burglar bars because we have armed response.
1.1) The windows cannot open wide, I have “locks” on them,
1.2) You need a hammer to break the glass,
1.3) and being aluminum frames, the glass is siliconed fast. You cannot just remove the insert outside and the glass is free. - Alarm must be acceptable to insurers/alarm companies.
- Don’t want the alarm on my phone/App, least of all renter’s phones … phones get stolen, read, more things to worry about.
Don’t know about alarms though, learning fast. 
So your protection is only as good as your armed response.
About 6 months ago we had an incident in my complex, loadshedding + guardhouse inverter damaged so intercom not working + plus intruders in the complex. I pressed the panic button as intruders ran through my property. Adt arrived at the main gate and couldn’t get in, so they just left.
Looking at riots that happened in Kzn, a hammer on the glass gives you an additional few seconds on protection. Burglar bars maybe an additional few minutes but also makes your property a harder target.
I don’t have burglar bars on all windows but I’m in the process of making some for the remaining windows.
Riots … eish, next level serious shiite that!
Storytime:
BIL goes and visits FIL. He wakes up with a man next to his bed. He lies still, man moves on.
FIL becomes aware of people in their bedroom.
A few things were stolen after the guys left.
Joke is, FIL (retired civil engineer) installed Spanish bars. They removed them with a car jack … ever so quetly, no one heard a sound.
My take, when they want into your house, they will get in.
Lady working in the house can be threatened to give codes/keys/alarm codes. I expect that, and not her fault. Her life or yours …
I have signs for camera surveillance, snakes, and armed response on the walls outside.
Walls, gates and locks are there to keep honest people outside.
Now I know about making it less attractive to break into one’s house … for that the wife has two Yorkies.
Little dogs sleeping in the house … the absolute best security … also to keep cats off the lawn, outside the house. But bugger, I wanna shoot them teeny dogs! But, they are loveable… for the wife …
I don’t see that as an excuse to make it easier.
Anyway, I installed these around the house.
Really easy to DIY, there is an alarm interface you can hook to your alarm system, if you want to. I prefer not to, that little Nano device of theirs beeps loud enough to wake the dead anyway.
How these work, is you mount them away from the house, pointing towards it. On the inside of an outside wall can work, but then in such a way that it cannot be reached easily without first climbing over the wall. They also have a tamper sensor, which I know works, because one of the devices gets hit frequently by a passing lawnmower.
That means I am awake before the intruder makes it to the front door, or any window. Then he still has to make it through the gates at the doors (front door would be easiest. seconds with a bolt cutter), then another few seconds through the front door (crowbar). Then, there is a big barrier between the bedrooms and the rest of the house, which will probably take a few minutes to breach… but the valuables are not in that part of the house, so an informed thief should leave the people alone.
If we need to escape, there is a route across the roof of the house to the neighbours. Not the safest, but perfectly doable.
Looking at these as well…
No excuse … it is a fact, luckily we are not targeted all the time by dedicated criminal syndicates … o wait, our area and surrounds were at one stage. Really professional crowd too!
Till the neighborhood watches with help from the security Co’s in the area, caught the guys that targeted houses with gun safes in the area, them having obtained a list of said safes, with help of one security company in the area to not patrol that house/street at times … they no more do any security patrols in the areas here.
Storytime:
I had motion sensors around the house, front back, and roofs, for as you rightfully say, you need to know someone is on the way to the house, not at the windows, nor inside.
So the motion sensors go off one evening. I jump up, and peek through the window, no, not like the movies, you won’t see me peeking.
Nothing. Note, there are outside lights.
Go back to sleep.
Hours later, another warning. I jump up again, WHAT is this now after all these years of never an alarm!?
Weeks later I hear that my daughter and her friend unscrewed the window “locks” (can only be done from the inside), then using a stepladder climbed out the opening window, note, they are as high as can be, and slipped out and over the wall, returning a few hours later.
They trigger the motion sensing AFTER they removed the power to the unit, not knowing it has a backup battery.
I removed the damn expensive system. Why? I never knew that it took up to 30 seconds from detection to alarm inside on the unit … and because the battery nearly exploded. Smelt some electrical smell early one morning, traced it to the unit, the last straw.
So yeah, I need to figure out:
- New pre-warning system that is near instant.
- One that my 83yo Dad, early morning, will not trigger when he goes gardening. Yeah, he gets bees, not a bee, bees in his bonnet sometimes. “This that MUST be done NOW!” or some such.
- Access to the house from any side, when I think like a burglar, is ridiculously easy yet very complicated to monitor. Double story, yet the top level is the same height as the neighbors. Ek bly in 'n “gat”.
@plonkster , will look into that unit of yours if you can confirm it triggers near instant on sensing motion. Can you confirm that please?
I can vouch for the RoboGuards, brilliant product that will alert instantly. My dog knows where the intruder is just by counting the number of beeps. She knows when its someone moving or playing in the garden and she knows the number of beeps for the front gate. She will pause and listen before dashing off.
I have had them installed in the harsh SA sun for nearly a decade without a single failed unit. Amazing kit!
My only bit of advice, if the batteries need replacing, buy the OEM batteries they come supplied with. I have used Duracell and Energizer and they don’t last nearly as long in the heat and cold.
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Yes, it triggers instantly. It has a little receiver (called the “Nano”) with a lanyard/strap you can wear around the neck. You can program 8 beams to the one Nano. You activate the beams using the buttons on the Nano (or more properly, the beams always send a signal, but you activate whether the Nano warns you about it).
Sometimes it does have a false positive. Hadeda Ibis, for example, is just the right size to trip it. Roaming cats as well, they have this thing where they walk along a wall and jump down RIGHT where you installed the beam. When positioning the beam, it helps to place it in an area where there isn’t a natural “end of the road” where a cat would jump down.
For my one beam, I installed bird spikes right above the beam on the wall, so that it forces the neighbour’s cat to jump down 50cm earlier. Works perfectly.
It has two beams, and small dogs doesn’t trigger both beams. I don’t know about large ones, but if you adjust it properly it should not be a problem.
Even if you do get a false positive, it will typically beep only once. A real human tends to set it off repeatedly, so it is quite easy to know if it is a Hadeda, a cat, or a human being.
I keep the Nano next to the bed. If it beeps once during the night, I will typically ignore it and go back to sleep. If it beeps twice, you get up and inspect the surroundings.
It also has a beep-pattern for every beep. I have 4 beams up, so it is simple enough (the zone is indicated by the number of beeps), but from 5 beams on it beeps in a combination of tones. Still, you know exactly which beam was tripped just by the beeping pattern. So for the gardening geriatric situation, you would typically hear that zone go off at 6AM (or whenever), you will know exactly what is going on, you will deactivate zone-1 (or ver) and go back to sleep.
They work really well. They are a bit pricey though (for the wireless ones).
Edit: They do have more of a tendency to get false alerts during daytime. On a sunny day, warm, with the wind moving a tree branch, they can trigger on that. Never had a problem at night though with moving flora. Only Fauna.
Edit 2: The biggest quality-of-life improvement this brings, is that when your security systems DOES false-trip at night, you’re not immediately convinced that someone is in the house. If the beams are untripped, then an alarm tripping is very likely a false positive. That makes it much easier for high-strung people (such as my wife) to get back to sleep afterwards without dreaming of home invasions.
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But on that topic… story time as you say.
One evening there was load-shedding, around midnight. And because the 12V backup battery was quite weak, and as we all know the Multi takes a few milliseconds to switch, there was enough of a disturbance to trip the alarm. Both myself and the wife fell into a deep sleep, and slept right through the alarm (the siren is on the outside).
30 minutes later the beams went off. Someone was in the garden. Turns out it’s the armed response guy. The beeping of the Nano woke us up.
So I went downstairs to talk to the guy from armed response… and only THEN did the dog wake up. Severely upset. Or more likely, probably scared! Took half an hour to calm the dog down, and he insisted on sleeping on the back porch. Safer… I suppose?
Then at 4AM, my daughter’s laptop (which was paused on some YouTube video) decided to unpause. Blasts loud talking voices… everyone awake again… another half hour to calm the dog down.
The dog is the weakest link in this system…
Oh man, THAT is epic!!!
Precious.
Animals, we have lost touch with them, on how clever (animal clever) they can be!
Will see if my wife’s one dog will also figure it out. The other one is too “stupid”. the little peeing rat.
(He can stay another week. ok!)
FWIW, all the security companies say, houses with small dogs sleeping inside, are the best deterrent. Big dogs sleeping outside, can get poisoned, or drugged. They throw food over the wall, then wait.
@plonkster thanks for that vouch. Also @Thaelian for the Roboguard. Will definitely look into both!
But will get a security expert in to tell me the best places to mount them. Too many opportunities. I tried to mount cameras years ago, the same thing, they were “useless”. A security guy came along one day and asked who mounted these? I just shrugged, “came” with the house.
He says, they will never work like this, must be installed like so, and fixed them all.
Still, the cameras are also gone, by the time you can look at a picture, whoever was there is long gone. There is a reason for people sitting watching security cameras. But will get to that later again, they must cover all the nooks and crannies, cleverly with advice.
The Askari is the DIY version of the Roboguard. It’s slightly cheaper too. I don’t think it is quite as robust, but so far it’s resisted the harsh sun. The semi-translucent plastic over the sensor has changed more white over time, but it does not seem to impact performance. And I’m sure it can be replaced.
The DVR does help you to see, later, exactly when it happened. I’ve used it exactly once, when my neighbour’s water meter was stolen. I could tell him it happened around 5AM in the morning.
Combined with the beams, and if you have an app on your phone that can hook into the DVR (I used to use VLC, but sadly it stopped working with the Dahua DVR 
), then when the beams go off you can quickly look at your cameras.
If you use the alarm interface, you can hook that into HomeAssistant with a bit of work (I’ve done it, but it is presently removed… I need to redo it). Then in theory you can make HomeAssistant grab the video from the zone and store it for you, even send it to your phone. I know people who have done that. Haven’t managed to do it myself yet, but that is mostly because the beams work so well that the camera system is really more of a luxury. I can use it to see if the doorbell is for something important, or a random beggar…
Been thinking of this … https://blueirissoftware.com/
Got that idea here on EnergyTalk, that it works quite good, can have the cameras warn you if you set the area on the software.
Thanks to you, I remembered that again … got the Realonk POE camera’s already, must just #($*% get to it.
Could be an idea to use that instead of beams. 
I’m currently in the market for wireless outdoor beams and naturally I looked at the Roboguard.
It’s a bit odd to see Askari is no longer much cheaper than Roboguard, which makes one wonder why they keep both on the market?
Ok Askari has got indoor PIR’s as well and it seams they have units now with the HQ and GSM module all in one unit even with a built in battery.
As for the rest it is pretty much the same product, or am I missing something?
Last time I checked, which is more than a year ago now, The Roboguard was at least a good 20% more expensive. The Askari wasn’t cheap by any means (over 2k for the wireless beam), but it was cheaper than the Roboguard. I have no idea what they price now.