Vastly inferior product in the upgrade

First thing that comes to mind is after the control panel is set up, it immediately goes into the update mode (once connected).  This is not covered in the documentation at that point.  When I asked tech support about it, they had me do other things at the same time as the download.  Obviously that caused the download to fail.  At one point they asked me to reset my router, which obviously would have killed the download (and our text-based help support) so I let them know I wasn't doing that.  When I finally told them enough and goodbye, I did the update and waited for it to complete before moving on successfully.

My initial question to them was to explain why the light on the base unit was running around the base in a circle - what did that mean?  They didn't know, and nothing in the literature mentioned anything about that lighting.  Later I figured out on my own that it meant that the base station was waiting to pair with devices.

Having something in the documentation about the update, and that it would automatically happen right after the control unit was connected to the internet, would have been helpful.  Then something else that said that once the base station was ready to pair with devices, the lighting I mentioned would happen, would have been helpful and eliminated my need for tech support.

Long term customer who has installed at least a dozen systems. SS3 is vastly superior, IMO, to SS2 and build and fit is fine. Great value, works well, but now let's move on to support and documentation.

SS has expanded greatly over the past few years to  over 4 million customers now.  Unfortunately, training of the agents has not caught up. What I tell anyone who is installing a new system I recommend: plug in the base, install it and then wait for a minimum of 30 minutes and make sure there is no lights at the base. Ditto for installing cameras, waiting for it to connect as it often gets a software update. Yes, documentation and training of agents needs to step up. But, still best effective and overall security solution out there. Period.

@rjlaws​ thank you for the detailed feedback!

I can at least answer your original question: we refer to that light behavior as a "search light", and what it means depends on the color:

• Yellow/Amber: Base Station is in the process of updating firmware to the latest version
• White: The system is in Setup and Naming Mode, and is ready receive a pairing signal from a sensor or component. Or it could be that it's searching and attempting to connect to nearby WiFi networks. 

You can learn more about what all of the different lights indicate through our article here.

By 'literature', I'm guessing that you mean the Setup Guide that we include with all new systems. We do keep that guide more brief, giving only the most essential info. But we cover everything else in a lot more detail over on our online Help Center.