Lyric SIXFOB: First Impressions

Hi, DIYers. Sterling, with Alarm Grid here. And today, we're doing a video on our first impressions of the Lyric LKF or Lyric Key Fob 500. So, again, the part number is going to be the LKF500 for this Lyric Key Fob.

We are...I got to put a caveat, we are in beta so that part number may change but that's what on the initial documentation that we received from Honeywell, that'll be an LKF500. It's a four-button key fob which is the standard in the industry. One button for arm away, one button for disarm, one button for arm stay, and then one button which can be custom programmed. Most people use it for a panic if they're going to enable that and that could be a silent panic or an audible panic, depending on what you want to do.

On the back side, we see, instead of the traditional serial number sticker with the A alpha digit followed by the 7 digit number, we actually have a 16 digit MAC address and this device is an actual computer. It actually can be firmware updated, the sensor itself or the key fob itself, which we think is very, very cool. So we're hoping that Honeywell, as they release new features and new capabilities of the system, depending on the version of the firmware of your sensor, instead of having to buy a new device, it could be as simple as having your provider send down a new firmware update to your fob, so we think that's pretty cool.

When comparing it to the 5834 is where it loses some points. Obviously, it's a little bit bigger, more of a rectangular shape. In fact, the whole 5834 footprint fits inside of the Lyric pretty easily. So they've got a little bit of a different case design and certainly a little more bigger and boxier. You could see the keychain ring is a lot bigger on this one, which is adding to the depth or the height of the device but it's also pretty sturdy. I mean, we've heard of people having this portion break on their 5834-4 and then they can't put it on their keychain ring, this one seems to be a little sturdier and not going to disconnect as easily.

Both of them have a screw on the back to open up to the inside if you had to replace the battery for some reason. Although they come with a fresh battery, they should last for a very long time. And then the other thing that we noticed is the lights at the top here. You got different little activation lights so on the 5834-4, you press a button and you get the lights. This one has two lights, which gives us a lot more information. This was more of a dummy key fob, when you press a button, it just sends the alert out and any panel that's been programmed for that fob would accept the alert. When you press a button, if you're not near the panel to know that the activation went through, you'd have no idea it worked. On the LKF500, it's bidirectional, two-way communications to and from the panel.

So that's our initial first impressions on the LKF500. We think that they went a step backwards in the case design. However, we are hoping that as they develop the six series sensors, they're going to be able to come down and streamline this devices to be a little smaller so we'll be anxious to see how that plays out. But we're really impressed by the ability to get feedback from the fob based on the system arming or disarming and we really liked these little status LEDs to show you what's happening. Also, it is bidirectional and encrypted so there's no putting it into high security mode or taking it out. It's always high secure, it's always encrypted.

So that's our introduction for LKF500, we hope that this will be a really popular key fob to use when the Lyric is finally released and if you have any questions on the LKF500, pre-release or post-release, please email us, support@alarmgrid.com. We'd be happy to help. And also, make sure to subscribe to our channel as we release more videos about this great, new Honeywell Lyric system, you'll be kept up-to-date with all of the new functions and features.