Sensaphone 400 Monitoring System

We have a seasonal home in the south which means that we leave our northern place for 3-4 months, unoccupied, in winter. The Sensaphone 400 is our eyes and ears when we are gone.To get started, you'll need to read the manual, which is not in geek-speak, but is in a very consumer friendly language. I had the unit up and running in less then an hour., including reading the manual. Pretty easy. When we leave for the seanon, we shut off our cable and phone, so one very nice feature of the Sensaphone is that you can hook it up to a "cellular home phone" service. Walmart has this available under its Straightalk brand. This allows you to have a phone connection to the Sensaphone even if the power goes out in the house as the cellular home phone also has battery backup. Plus it only costs $15/month though you do need to buy a cellular home phone box which was about $35 on the Straighttalk web. All in all a ton cheaper then keeping on the cable.In addition to the standard sensors you can also call the unit to check power and temperature plus even listen in to your home if you want to. It will also call you if any of the sensors detect a problem, even if it hears a loud noise. If it can't reach you, it will call out to three other numbers. We have local folks on the call list back home.All in all, well thought out machine. I would buy this one again.

One of my customers had a Sensaphone monitoring 2 greenhouses. When I inherited a house I used this to monitor the temperature and power from my house. It requires a land line but can be set up for a cell phone. It will call a number of phone numbers to report power outages, temperature alarms, excessive noise and a number of N/O and N/C switch combinations for external sensors. Can be interrogated and perform commands remotely with a land line connection. I now have it monitoring my house 24/7. Great "house sitter."

We use the Sensaphone 400 at three locations. There durable, easy to program, cost effective and have all the features we need. The only improvement I would like to see is an adjustable volume control for the speaker. In a noisy area the volume can be to low.

We have one of these in a vacation home at a remote vacation. We had it in use during the past winter when the temperatures at the house were well below freezing for an extended period. We called the Sensaphone every day, and it reported the temperature of the house verbally. When the electricity went off a couple of times, it called to report that, which it can do as is is battery backed. It can also monitor for water on a floor, an open door, or other problems with additional sensors, which are not included with the unit but can be purchased separately. The peace of mind that a unit like this delivers makes it a good value, though it is not cheap. Highly recommended.

I have had this unit running at our vacation home for over 7 years, and it has always worked perfectly. Great for temperature monitoring, power monitoring and water leaks. You can call it at any time for a status check, or it will call you if a preset alarm is triggered. The batteries seem to last for ever too. The peace of mind is wonderful.

WARNING – While most of the reviews on the Sensaphone 400 are positive here, there is one situation that you must be aware about. If you purchase or have purchased the Sensaphone 400 to monitor for power outages AND you have phone service provided through your cable company you are at risk that a power failure will result in the Sensaphone 400 being unable to provide any dial out warnings of any kind.I ordered this unit expecting to remotely monitor my sump pump operation. A timely notice of a power failure is critical to me to keep my basement dry. I looked carefully at Sensaphone’s literature and even downloaded the online owner’s manual before ordering and there was no mention of the limitations of this unit when hooked up to a cable modem phone line.After purchasing the unit, but before installation, I called Sensaphone’s tech support and told the tech rep I was using phone service from my cable TV provider and I was assured there was no problem.I installed the unit but I still could not understand how the unit could dial out during a complete power outage. Several years ago a tornado snapped off power line poles near my home and I had no power, no cable TV, no Internet and no phone service for 18 hours. There seemed to be no way the Sensaphone 400 could make dial out warnings under those conditions.Even though you install backup batteries to power the base unit during a power outage, the cable modem that provides my phone service still requires power. Even if you have back up power to the cable modem, if a major storm knocks down the power and phone poles, there’s a good chance the cable company’s lines will go down too.I called the Time Warner and they confirmed that there would be no phone service in the event of power failures or if cable lines where damaged in some way. I recall I even lost cable service once when a car hit a power pole near me!I called Sensaphone and asked if they had a workaround or if they would refund my money because I felt they had to know about this problem and yet nothing I read about this unit reveals this shortcoming. The rep said Amazon.com would take it back but I feel Sensaphone should have done something due to their lack of disclosure.The unit otherwise seems well thought out and performs as advertised and perhaps is a good unit for those of you on conventional land line phone service. For me, it turned out to be an expensive mistake and I felt the Company is being less than honest for not clearly informing their customers that it’s almost useless if you have cable phone service through a modem.