PowerMax SMS

Four buttons, with the command printed under them

The front screen is four panels in the colours you expect: red for arm away, green for disarm, amber for arm home and blue for status. They are large enough to hit in the dark, with gloves on, from a car window.

Under each name stands the command that will be sent — TILK, FRAK, TN, ST. That is not decoration: the commands belong to the panel, not the app, and if they are wrong the panel simply does not answer. With them in plain sight you can see it at once instead of guessing why nothing happened.

At the top sits the panel's latest reply, with the time and what you sent. It stands in the panel's own wording, in the panel's own language — the app does not rewrite it.

• Arm away, disarm, arm home, status
• The command stands under the button, every time
• Confirmation before sending can be switched on
• A home screen widget with the same three

Every message followed to the door

Most SMS apps fire and forget. Here every command is recorded with its status all the way: sending, sent, delivered — or failed, with the reason, whether that is no network, flight mode or a refusal from the phone itself. The receipt comes from the radio, not from a guess.

That is the whole difference between standing in the driveway believing the alarm is off and knowing it.

The log holds both what you sent and what the panel answered, with the time and which panel it was. The alarm code is replaced by dots everywhere it appears — 'FRAK ••••' — so the log can be read, and passed on for help, without handing over the key.

Twelve panel languages, nine commands

A PowerMax panel answers only to the commands of its own language, and they are not the same. The app knows them for twelve: Danish, Dutch, Dutch 2011+, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Pick the one the panel is set to and the right commands are ready.

The values were read out of the old app and are locked down by tests, precisely because they must not drift: one wrong letter is a command the panel ignores in silence.

If your panel was set up differently, each of the nine commands can be edited on its own and reset to the language default with one tap. An empty field means the default — you do not have to type it back in to return.

• 12 languages, each with its own default commands
• All nine commands can be edited per panel
• An empty field means the language default
• The language is set per panel, not for the whole app

Lights and PGM from the same app

If the panel has X10 devices attached, they can be switched on and off here: the PGM output and up to fifteen devices, each under the name it has in the house — living room lamp, kitchen, garden, carport.

You choose which ones are shown. If three are in use, the other twelve should not fill the screen, and the list can be kept short enough that the right switch can be hit without reading.

They are the same text message commands as the rest: the devices are driven by the panel, not by a cloud, and so they still work when the internet in the house is down.

It is a key to your house

The alarm code is not a setting like the others. It is stored encrypted in the phone's hardware keystore, masked everywhere it is shown, and kept out of cloud backups — so it does not travel to a new phone behind the owner's back.

The app can be locked behind a fingerprint, a face or the phone's screen code. If the phone cannot unlock, the app opens as normal rather than shutting the owner out of their own alarm.

Turn on replies from the panel and its messages arrive as an ordinary notification instead of a window thrown over whatever you were doing. Only messages from the exact number you entered yourself are touched — everything else passes on to the phone's usual messaging app.

There is no server and no account. House, summer house and workshop can each be their own panel with its own number, code, language and device names, switched from the top bar.

• The code encrypted, masked and kept out of backups
• Fingerprint, face or screen code in front of the app
• Replies as notifications, only from your own panel
• As many panels as you need
• A choice of SIM on dual-SIM phones