Electronic Alarms and Home Security Devices - alarm system

Can anyone suggest a good do it yourself alarm system.
I have 3 entrance doors, 1 sliding door, and 20 windows to protect.

Thanks

First up, what do you want this system to do for you? At a basic level, it will make noise and hopefully scare off someone, but without a monitoring service, that's all it can do.

Secondly, are you comfortable running low-voltage wiring such as cable and phone? That's the really hard part. At a minumum, you'll need to run wires from the main panel to each keypad and the main panel to the siren(s). If you have a standard phone line and would like monitoring, you'll also need a wire from the NID to the main panel. I'd also run wires from your entrance doors to the main panel. For everything else, I'd suggest a mix of wireless and wired sensors. Use wired sensors as much as possible (less expensive, no batteries to buy/replace), but where the wiring is too hard, use wireless.

What is your budget? Or, how much are you looking to spend?

I'd definitely add a glass break sensor for the sliding glass door and consider some motion sensors where/if they make sense.

The professionals here will also strongly recommend a smoke detector, which means another wire to the main panel. This detector is seperate from your existing smoke alarms.

Are there any other features you want, such as wireless keyfobs to arm/disarm/panic? Computer or home automation interface? Additional keypads?

One last note, where I used the term "wire" above, I mean a cable with four seperate conductors inside, similiar to old-school phone cable.

I hope this helped, somewhat.

The excellent post above is good advice to follow. Look through the archived posts and the FAQ for this topic. Your question comes up several times a month, and the answers really don't change.

Stick with a major brand, and shop based on the features you want.