Home » Household Sensors & Alarms

Got the product on time and in good shape. Everything was easy to understand and install. I buried the probe as instructed about 1000 feet from the house and so far it has worked flawlessly. The only problem I have is the volume control seems to be all or nothing. It is hard to get it to turn down without turning off. I would like to have had a list of products that the relays could be used to operate. Overall good product that does what it is designed to do.

The alert system has worked as advertised. I installed in a driveway about 1,500 ft from the receiver and a few trees in between. The user interface is through dip switches and push buttons which is archaic given the state of today's electronics. The speaker on the receiver plays a very distorted tune at any but the lowest volume setting. For those reasons, I rated it 4 stars instead of 5. The functionality is fine. It would've been nice to have an easy way to set alarm state, reminders and chimes. And, the squeaky, distorted sound when it alarms is very annoying.

Great notification of arrival to the house gate. Dakota provides great techical support. Like the choice of different tones and prefer this over the MURS model. Be careful not to bury the probe to deep or you'll miss the small cars.

After being installed, the product works great. Cards in sensor box were just laying in the case. Someone putting the product together either got in a hurry or just put the parts in the case. After figuring out how they were to be installed, the parts fix reasonably well. My only complaint is that the battery case just lays on top of the cards in the sensor case and will not stay put. I put a piece of styrofoam inside the lid to hold the batteries secure.

Got this for my Mom who lives in the sticks so she would know when someone is coming up the very long drive, that cannot be seen from the house. I placed it about 400 yards from the home so she would know well in advance when someone is coming, and even through the trees the signal is received on the 3rd story of the home! Totally wireless to the home! Easy! Gives a nice, loud, tone so she can hear it throughout the house. Install and testing took about 1 hour. Works great and does not pick up animals. Has to be a metallic object to make it go off, so if it chimes, there's definitely a car coming. Good piece of mind to know when someone is coming down the lane that she is not expecting, and knows this well in advance.

It was 30 degrees today so I installed the transmitter on a tree and put the sensor in the snow along side the driveway. Drove the garden tractor past the sensor and heard the chime in the house. The volume on my receiver seem to work great. I was going to hook the C contacts up to the doorbell, but the volume on the receiver is loud enough on half volume to hear through out the house. This thing is great! No complaints at all!

After calling the manufacturer I found out the difference between the 3000 model and the 2500 model (the 3000, now rated at 600 feet was formerly rated 3000 feet, some sort of FCC problem). The 2500 is the newer technology. It seems to work better that 90% of the time a vehicle passes. I can't tell if it's the probe not seeing the event, or if it the signal not getting to the receiver. Still working on it. There's no false alarms. I have the sender about 300 feet from the receiver.

This item delivered what was advertised. It arrived on the promised date and worked out of the box with no problems. You do have to bury the sensor probe and connecting wires and mount the transmitter, so installation entails some significant work. My installation placed the transmitter about 300 feet from the house and it has triggered successfully on each passing vehicle. I particularly liked that the receiver is equipped with solid state relays that allow you to trigger buzzers or bells in other parts of the house.

While it sounds like some users have had frustrations with either the operation or installation, the series 2500 alert unit as described works well for us, so far. We have not experienced deep below-zero readings in our neck of the woods in northern Minnesota and will report back if there is a problem.
I installed the 2500 series with a clear line of site to the transmitter of about a 1000 feet. The cable to the underground magnet lies in a 1" conduit [flexible irrigation pipe] in case I ever had to pull it....that was a bit more trouble but will be worth the effort. The unit has worked fine each and every time an automobile or ATV drives parallel to the driveway.
I agree with other reviewers that the receiver box has a cheap feel to it and the slots to open it are a bit awkward. An upgrade in this department would be a big plus.
However, my interactions with the customer service at company headquarters in Elk Point, South Dakota, have been more than positive. What the product lacks in feel and heft is easily overlooked by this friendly and courteous service. This is probably due to the size of the company and the flexibility employees have to make any problems right. [The supplier I ordered from had a website that stated the 3000-series was long range; their website had not been updated, but Dakota Alert headquarters took care and made the solution right].

I am all all set with Dakota garbage. These clearly are made like junk, every aspect of them is flimsy plastic, homemade feel and they just don't work. 2500ft, 600 ft. More like 100 feet. I have bought 3 and I can label them as this, DOA, going to be DOA or wish it was DOA since the range is so bad. What a dissapointment after digging the cable in 3 times only to find out, once again, it is a waste of money. These feel like they cost about $10 to make. They switched from 9v to 8 (AA) Batteries and all they did was cut the 9v tab so you can jam the battery pack in there, cmon guys you are charging $200 for this thing, they sell netbooks for that. You might have to spend some money updating the design.