TL;DR: when the technician put hands on my device, disabled NTP (unattended time updates from internet) and locked settings with a password so I'm forced to pay him €50/hour to change the time
The year is 2018: there was a burglary in my building and my SO begged me for an alarm system. Perfect, so I ordered immediately a 3G Arduino shield and some PIR sensors.
WTF is that, you're not going to DIY that shit, right? I want something that works all the time and doesn't require any fiddling, no wireless sensors that go out of battery and you will notice after years. And I don't want flying wires everywhere, call a professional that will run cables in existing conduits
So I searched for a fully wired solution that didn't have any subscriptions/servers/internet/apps yet allow remote control and call police when required (commercial solutions with a certification can directly interface with police) and that with professional installation didn't cost an arm and a leg. And that allows easy change of settings in the future.
The day of install, the technician tells me "give me the sim card" - to which I reply "it's ok I install it later when you're done" but to my dismay he said "no, the system must be bound to the sim card serial number using the installation tool".
Fuck! I totally overlooked this! So i run to the city searching for a company that gives me a reasonably priced IOT sim card and do it immediately. Luckily I found one and I come back in time after a couple hours, he was almost done and I notice that he's not setting it up using the main unit screen, but instead was using his laptop via serial.
"Huh? I thought it could be set via the screen"
"Yes, but via computer I have access to more settings "
And I didn't pay attention to this sentence until now.
I had to remove electricity for a couple hours to install some Shelly relays in the light switches, when I was done the alarm said "RTC error, set time again".
Ah yes, after all those years the battery is dead = dead RTC. It's ok, I take the user manual and see how to change the time, but the menu doesn't show that. Huh? How? The manual states also that it could update via NTP if internet is available or via GSM cell info if no internet is available. Perfect! So I wait for one day and... nothing. Wait a couple more... nothing.
I finally call support: they tell me that if the menu is missing, it's because the tech used their special software over serial to hide time setting and NTP, for "security", as an attacker could disable the alarm by doing a MITM over the NTP and change the time to daytime and get the alarm disable by itself with the timer
Conclusion : I have to pay 50-100 euro to someone come to my house to personally do something as trivial as just change the time
the inability to manage my own system would be a solid "yea never mind this isn't what I wanted" and shipping the device back. it probally wouldn't be a full refund but, that's the cost for me making a mistake like that. I'll be damned if in not going to be able to access my own alarm panel. I would be firmly against any setting not being in a user accessible location regardless if it's a time thing.
Hopefully op had the tech enable all settings on the main panel cause that's such a shitty money grabbing practice. Just lock the ability to change time behind a service code on the main panel. incorrect code = alarm is triggered.