Retrofit Alarm kit

I would love some feedback on people that have installed a retrofit alarm kit, pros and cons.

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I installed it. Piece of cake. Seems a bit expensive for the limited functionality but worth it if you want to tie in to your Ring Alarm as it’s seamless. There are 8 zones for contact sensors and its merely a matter of moving each of those zones to the screw terminals on the retrofit kit. You add the retrofit kit to your Ring alarm like any other zwave device - just add it and scan the barcode. Once you do that the wired sensors show up as any other sensor does.

In my case I have a home run from each window casing to my panel which would take me well over the 8 zones on the retrofit kit. Since knowing exactly which window is open in the family room is really overkill I just created a single zone by tying the 3 together in series so if any 1 is open the “Family Room Windows” alarm.

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I installed the retrofit kit this weekend after having sat on it for too long! I’d say it’s a bit overpriced for what it does, but on the other hand being able to tie in to all the existing contact sensors is fantastic!

Set up with really simple! My existing hard wired system was a bit different than the diagrams as they did a one wire common set up where all the commons were wired together. I also have a motion sensor in the existing system. The one wire worked out well because I was able to use the motion sensor in the ring setup by keeping the existing hard wire control panel powered. This works for glass break sensors as well - if you keep the existing panel powered they will work. They just aren’t supported.

Take pictures of the current setup and label all your wires before starting.

I have two Retrofit Alarm Kits, one for the casement windows in the kitchen and another for the casement windows at the front of the house. Each RAK is bypassable as a single unit, not by each zone inside the RAK, so for my needs I have two of them. The setup was easy. I have an issue with the second RAK which I think is defective, but the first works like a champ.

Update 1-15-2020: I called Ring’s help line (800-656-1918) and the tech reset my second RAK remotely which then lead to 100% success. I was unexpectedly surprised and impressed. Sincere thanks goes out to the Ring Alarm team.

Thanks everybody for your input. That’s what I wanted to know how easy or hard it was to install it and if it was worth the money to be spent on it.

Like one of you mention my house was also built with sensors on the windows and doors and motion sensors.

Also I think I read it in another discussion I think I’m going to wait until Ring comes out with an update or a device that can say " open door, close door or open window close window" and so.

My alarm system that I had before had that and came in handy to know what was being open and close.

It does not speak it but it is very easy to look at the app to see what the state of each sensor is. Just wanted to let you know that

With a list of devices available on the phone such as ours, having a voice tell you what’s open or closed may not be necessary. Any device on the system can be set to one of several beep tones whenever an open state occurs, but ours is set to “none” in that we just look at the list.

FYI.