Dakota Alert Wireless Driveway Alarm Portable Receiver PR-4000 - Compatible with 4000 Transmitters | Battery-Powered Monitor Comes with USB Charger & Belt Clip, Driveway Alarms Wireless

This receiver has very poor range. Maximum 100 meters no timber interference. It does require charging every 5 days. Not worth buying, better to spend the money on more mains powered devices which have a range of 300 meters to 1 km depending on terrain (timber not mountain).

Useful device and a good addition other Dakota Alert receivers (DCR-4000 RE-4Kplus) because it's portable and also keeps a timestamped log of alerts organized by Zone. LCD is backlight. The 4 buttons (Power, Mode, Up, Down) have tactile feedback and are easy to push and difficult to accidently activate. Range and orientation sensitivity should be similar other Dakota Alert units because it uses the same helical antenna (it would be nice if they indicated antenna/device orientation for best or worst Tx/Rx performance). Has a optional haptic/vibration alert (like cell phone) and volume adjust for the speaker. Criticism are: 1. The keys lockout after 12 seconds and require pushing the Up and Down arrow together to reactivate. The display shows a key icon to indicate "lockout". Lockout isn't needed and should be user configurable setting. 2. The unit shows TTL (total) and the zone number. You must push the Power button to erase the Zone/TTL line before the keys are responsive. Unclear why this is needed, but it's annoying. 3. To see the traffic log, you must push Up+Down (to unlock), then push the Power (to erase Zone/TTL), then push Mode+Down, then begin scrolling through zones. (Keep the manual handy). 4. Still uses USB-Micro charging port (although the supply a USB-A to USB-Micro cable). I'd buy it again.

This is a great little portable receiver for your Dakota driveway alarm system! It is easy to setup, but does require a bit of patience due to the somewhat primitive controls (up/down arrows to move from station to station [up to 16] and to select the sound for each station). If you miss the sound or station, then you have to cycle back through them all to get the sound or station you wanted. Once you have paired the sensor to this receiver, then it works very nicely. So far, it has sounded every time a vehicle has passed within range of the sensor.

It keeps a nice record of when the motion detector triggered, which is unusual in motion detectors, and very important. I find I have to recharge the unit more than once a week. It does not have a standard AC plug for constant use. I could leave it plugged into the charger all the time, but that can be dangerous for lithium ion batteries. Too many steps to clear the motion detection history: press 2 buttons, press 1 button, press 2 buttons, press 1 button, press 1 button. I may have missed a step. Extra button pushes to select different zones.

Nice portable receiver. Only minor things I dislike, maybe I'm missing something, is that there is no scroll feature concerning multiple alarms. It only displays the number of alarms since last clearing and time of the last alarm. Second, as the internal battery weakens, the battery level bars disappears one by one. With mine, one bar disappears as it's used, then when it's time to recharge, the display just goes completely blank with just a barely visible battery level bars. In other words, it doesn't work like a cellphone battery indicator where it goes down just one bar at a time. Mine, just BAM.... Surprise, surprise. Dead receiver. I'll watch and see if this is a continuous issue.