The keypad is the whole system, as far as your family is concerned
Nobody in your house will ever see the sensors, the cellular radio or the central station. They will see the keypad, twice a day, every day. If it is slow, confusing, or mounted in the wrong hallway, the whole system inherits its reputation.
Fixed written quote after a free survey — we beat any written competitor quote
Where the keypad goes decides whether the system gets used
The classic mistake is mounting the panel where the installer parked — just inside the front door, at whatever height the old panel happened to be. But most Texas families do not come and go through the front door. They come and go through the garage, into a mudroom or a kitchen, carrying groceries and backpacks and a dog leash. If the keypad is a hallway away from the door people actually use, arming the system becomes a errand, and systems that are errands get left disarmed.
We place the primary touchscreen at the real point of entry, at a height that works for everyone who uses it, and we add secondary keypads or app control where the traffic actually flows — the master bedroom being the most requested second location, because the last thing anyone wants at 11 p.m. is a walk to the far end of a dark house to arm the perimeter.
What a modern touchscreen actually does
The current generation of panels — the Qolsys IQ line and its Alarm.com-powered peers — bear no resemblance to the beeping beige keypads of 2005. A seven-inch glass touchscreen shows the state of every sensor in plain English, runs a live view of your cameras and doorbell, chimes distinctly for each door so you know from the kitchen whether that was the back door or the garage, and announces alarms by name instead of a generic siren tone.
Each person gets their own code — including temporary ones for the housekeeper, the dog sitter or the contractor, scheduled to work only on the right days and logged every time they are used. When a code disarms the panel, the event lands in the app. Parents of teenagers tell us this feature alone was worth the system.
And because the panel carries its own cellular radio and battery, it keeps working when the Wi-Fi drops and the power fails — an evening of CPS Energy load-shedding does not take your security down with the air conditioning.
Upgrading from the beige keypad era
If your wall currently holds a fifteen-year-old LED keypad wired to a panel in a closet, the upgrade path is gentler than you expect. In most homes the existing sensors — door contacts, motion detectors, glass breaks — are perfectly serviceable, and the new touchscreen panel takes them over via an encoder rather than requiring the walls opened up and everything replaced.
A technician evaluates what you have during the free survey, tells you plainly which parts are worth keeping, and quotes the whole change in writing. The usual result is a modern panel on the wall in an afternoon, your existing sensors still on duty, and one number on the quote instead of a surprise.
What is included
- Placed where life happensPrimary panel at the door your family actually uses, not the one the floor plan suggests.
- Qolsys IQ & Alarm.com panelsSeven-inch touchscreens with live camera view, plain-English status and per-door chimes.
- Per-person access codesIndividual and scheduled temporary codes, every use logged in the app.
- Cellular + battery backupThe panel keeps signaling through Wi-Fi drops and power failures.
- Keeps your existing sensorsMost takeovers reuse the contacts and motions already in your walls.
- Fixed written quoteEvaluated at the free survey. We beat any written competitor quote on comparable scope.
Questions people actually ask
- Can I add a second keypad in the bedroom? +
- Yes, and it is our most requested addition. Secondary touchscreens, small wireless arming stations and the phone app all control the same system, so you can arm the perimeter from bed instead of walking the house.
- Will a new touchscreen panel work with my existing sensors? +
- Usually. Most wired and wireless sensors from the last fifteen years can be taken over by a modern panel, and the free survey tells you definitively which ones. You replace the brain, keep the nervous system, and the quote reflects exactly that.
- What happens to the panel when the power goes out? +
- It keeps running on its internal battery and keeps communicating over cellular. Through the February 2021 freeze, monitored panels stayed online across multi-day outages while the houses around them went dark.
- Can guests or workers get their own codes? +
- Each person gets an individual code, and temporary codes can be scheduled — the housekeeper’s code works Tuesday mornings and never otherwise, and every use is logged with a name and a timestamp.
Touchscreen Keypads & Panels across Texas
We install and service this in all four metros, and in every community within fifty miles of downtown San Antonio. Service calls carry no trip charge regardless of how far out the address is.
Free survey · No obligation
Bring us a written quote. We will beat it.
Any competitor, comparable scope, in writing. A licensed technician walks your property, maps the real entry points and gives you a fixed number — whether or not you hire us.
TX DPS PSB Lic. #B16898 · Serving San Antonio, Austin, Houston & Dallas since 2010