Lowe's Iris: Boon or bane in fight against false alarms?

On one hand, it's hard not to see the appeal of Lowe's new Iris home management system. It's do-it-yourself for those with the dexterity to install a thermostat, it's cloud-based so homeowners can control and check on their properties remotely, and it's inexpensive: starter kits range from $179 to $299, and there are no monthly fees for those who choose to do their own alarm monitoring.

On the other hand, how many homeowners are really prepared to be their own central station?

Sarah-Frances Wallace, a Lowe's spokeswoman, recently touted the self-monitoring aspect of Iris in an interview with SSN's Tess Nacelewicz. Wallace said homeowners “can respond appropriately” when they receive a security alert, using an Iris camera to see “if there's an intruder in your home that would require police response … or if it's the dog knocking something over.”

Wallace said DIY monitoring helps avoid the problem of false alarms, for which many municipalities now charge homeowners a penalty. “This kind of gives the homeowner more control over triggered alarm events in the home,” she said.

But what happens when the homeowner decides the alarm is legit, they call 911, police respond and they find nothing amiss? What happens when the scenario gets played out three or four times in a month at the same residence? Do you think the municipality is going to continue to absorb the cost of dispatching officers and cruisers?

Ask any alarm company owner and I think you'll get a consistent response to that. Municipal budgets are tight and they're only going to get tighter. Just because a professional wasn't involved in the installation and monitoring of a system doesn't mean local officials are suddenly going to forgive and forget when it comes to false alarms.

For homeowners who want a little help when it comes to dealing with alerts from their Iris system, Lowe's offers a self-monitoring service for $9.99 a month. "You can set it up so if there's a triggered event in your home, it would email [or text or call] your neighbor … [or a] small network of people you'd want to receive notification of events," Wallace told SSN.

The service is ideal "if you're on vacation and you receive a notification that there is an event in your home," she said. "You could contact your neighbor—because they've also received [the notification]—and they could look into it for you."In a perfect world, it all ends well. If a pet triggered the alarm and the neighbor happens to be around to make that determination, everyone sleeps easy that night. But what if it wasn't Fido who did the deed and it's an intruder instead? What happens when the neighbor walks headlong into that situation?

Hello, Ken Kirschenbaum.

The point is, there are times when it pays to do things yourself and times when it pays to let professionals handle it. Again, it's hard to dispute the appeal of Lowe's Iris system for many people and for many applications. But should home security be one of them? Let the buyer beware.