A standalone LTE sensor with a reed switch, a loop input and a relay output, for monitoring things far past the reach of any house radio. All of it reports to Alarm.com over cellular.
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A standalone cellular sensor that reports only to Alarm.com over LTE. It never joins the local network, so no local integration is possible and the automation logic lives in Alarm.com's cloud.
The problem it solves is real and awkward: monitoring something too far away for a house radio. The objection is that the answer routes a gate contact or a tank level through a vendor cloud and a second cellular plan, with a relay on the far end that the same cloud controls. Where the site has any connectivity, an ESPHome node on a long-range link or a small LTE gateway keeps both the sensing and the decision on the client's own system.
- An ESPHome node on LoRa or a long-range link back to the site
- A small LTE router feeding a local controller, where cellular really is the only path
The clever one in the range. It is a battery and cellular sensor with three ways in and out: a magnetic reed switch, a dry loop input for any external contact, and a relay output for driving something. Sold on AT&T or Verizon as the -AT and -VZ variants.
Because it carries its own LTE radio, range stops being a design constraint. A gate at the end of a long drive, a remote outbuilding, a water tank in a field, a shipping container on a site with no power: these are the problems it exists for, and none of them are solvable with Z-Wave or Zigbee at any sensible cost.
The relay output is what lifts it above a sensor, since it can also act, which is how it gets used for gate control.
The catch is the usual one and it is total here. There is no local anything. The unit never joins the site network, and the loop it closes runs through Alarm.com’s servers. For the same job on a local system, an LTE gateway feeding Home Assistant over a VPN, or an ESPHome node on a long-range radio, keeps the logic on site.
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