Lowes Iris Boat Alarm

Thanks, I have a 5GB data plan for the Verizon Hotspot so that should not be much impact.

Does your system recover if the power fails and comes back or do you have UPS? I have been reading reviews of the USB modem Lowes sells and apparently on a power fail the system has to be manually reset.

BobH said:

Does your system recover if the power fails and comes back or do you have UPS? I have been reading reviews of the USB modem Lowes sells and apparently on a power fail the system has to be manually reset.

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Yes, it recovers.

I have it running on inverter power. If the inverter dies it has a built in battery pack that will run it for about an hour.

The router (and my satcom gear) runs off of a UPS, enabling communication if the inverter dies.

Kevin thanks for sharing, a lot of my boating friends are looking for an alarm system , one that uses ready available non marine components that can save us boat bucks would be great. You said that the cell modem can provide the internet connection, as well as the wired ethernet port. My question is can the system use the dock wireless internet at the dock and the cell when away, to save on data usage. When checking on another Z wave system it would not work with the Verizon Hotspot for some reason?

Pura Vida said:

Kevin thanks for sharing, a lot of my boating friends are looking for an alarm system and one that uses ready available non marine components that save us boat bucks is great. You said that the cell modem can provide the internet connection, as well as the wired ethernet port. My question is can the system use the dock wireless internet at the dock and the cell when away, to save on data usage. When checking on another Z wave system it would not work with the Verizon Hotspot for some reason?

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The trick here is to separate the network and the alarm functionality.

I wuld buy a router that can use wifi as the uplink port, and fall back to cellular if the wifi is not available.

www.cradlepoint.com

I found some reviews of the Verizon modem Lowes sells for the Iris system. Apparently there is something unique about it and Iris will only work with that model. Some folks used it for monitoring vacation cabins but if the power failed the Hub and modem would not reestablish a connection without somebody pushing a reset button.

We have a similar problem with our home internet connection. If power goes out and comes back on, the cable modem picks back up but the router needs to have the reset button pushed.

ksanders said:

The trick here is to separate the network and the alarm functionality.

I wuld buy a router that can use wifi as the uplink port, and fall back to cellular if the wifi is not available.

www.cradlepoint.com

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Kevin...I think they are confusing the built in router/modem that the verizon hot spot has with the need for a separate stand alone router that has the ability to connect via a WIFI or cellularly through the verizon hotspot to the internet.

mbevins said:

Kevin...I think they are confusing the built in router/modem that the verizon hot spot has with the need for a separate stand alone router that has the ability to connect via a WIFI or cellularly through the verizon hotspot to the internet.

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I agree, so here it goes.

The Lowes Iris system needs an internet connection to function. To accomplish this it has a standard ethernet port on it. Alternatively it can be purchased with a cellular modem, which has its own service plan, not connected to your personal cellular phones. This Lowes supplied modem cannot be used for anything other than the Iris system.