About the ALARM-A201P-Kit2-16WE
The ALARM-A201P-Kit2-16WE is HiLook's entry level wireless intruder alarm kit, built around the ALARM-A201P-16WE control panel. Hikvision describe it as the minimum kit for security protection, which is a fair and honest summary. It is not a monitored commercial system. It is a well specified starter bundle that gives a flat, a small house, a workshop or a shop unit real intrusion detection with app alerts, installed in an afternoon with no cabling between devices.
Four items come in the box: the control panel, one wireless keyfob, one wireless PIR detector and one wireless magnetic contact. That covers the classic minimum arrangement, one entry door protected by the contact, one room or hallway covered by the PIR, and arming and disarming from the keyfob. What matters more than the bundle itself is what the panel can grow into, because the capacity is a good deal more generous than a four piece kit suggests.
The panel supports 16 wireless zones, 16 keyfobs, 4 wireless keypads and 4 wireless sounders, split across up to 4 areas with 12 users, 3 installer accounts and a 1,000 event log. Four areas is the useful detail there, since it means a property can be partitioned, a house and a separate garage or office for example, and armed independently rather than all or nothing. For a small commercial unit that alone can be the difference between a system people use properly and one they stop arming because it is inconvenient.
All devices communicate on 868.0 to 868.6 MHz using 2GFSK modulation with frequency hopping to resist jamming, and the radio link is encrypted with AES-128. The 868 MHz band is licence exempt in the UK, far less congested than the 2.4 GHz band that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth already occupy, and penetrates walls and floors noticeably better, which is what makes a wireless alarm workable in a solid walled house rather than only an open plan flat. Hikvision quote up to 2,000 m of radio range from the panel in open space, so in practice the limit on any normal property is building fabric rather than distance.
The panel connects to the network by wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and app notifications cover alarms, faults, system events and operations, so you get told about low batteries and tamper faults too, not just break-ins. Firmware updates over the air keep it current without a site visit. The panel runs from 110-240 V mains with a built in backup battery giving up to 12 hours at normal temperature, and it is tamper protected.
The supplied PIR covers a 10 m radius at 90° across 78 detection zones, with sealed optics, digital signal processing, a 3500 lux white light filter and selectable high, auto or low sensitivity. At low sensitivity it offers pet immunity up to 24 kg, which covers most dogs and makes the difference between a system that gets armed at night and one that does not. The magnetic contact detects an opening gap of up to 25 mm. Both peripherals are fully supervised two-way devices with tamper protection and low battery reporting, and both run around two years from AA cells. The keyfob adds two configurable buttons alongside arm and disarm, useful for a panic function or partial arming.
