Ditch the 2G radio upgrade, my buddy's trick with a 4G-LTE module saved my install last Friday

Was on a job in Tacoma, customer's old panel was on 2G and the carrier text said dead line in a week. I was about to order a whole new board for $400, but my coworker Dave said just use a universal 4G-LTE communicator from the van. Took me 45 min to wire it in and set the dip switches, zero programming on the panel side. It locked onto the network, called central, and the customer shook my hand twice. Anyone else using those drop-in modules instead of swapping full panels? Have a feeling I've been overcharging my parts list for nothing.

1 comments

1 Comment

craig.olivia10d ago

Wired one of those into a rental property last month when the old 2G module finally gave up. Same deal, didn't want to touch the panel because the tenant had a bunch of Z-Wave stuff tied to it. Took me about an hour including mounting the antenna outside. It called the central station on the first try and the monitoring company didn't even ask any questions about the equipment. The only thing I'd watch is the power supply, make sure you're pulling from a clean 12V source or it'll drop offline on brownouts. Since then I've kept two of them in my truck at all times. Way better than explaining to a customer why they need a whole new system when the old one works fine.