It's very easy to program an alarm device in or out of a system. Just a matter of becoming familiar with the programming. And you are right - you'd have to program out the device if boat went out of range because most (good) wireless alarm system constantly poll each alarmed device (contact, IR, smoke detector, etc).

I don't remember the unit (I sold the boat) but the set-up was pretty slick. The mount held the entire unit (probably a 6-7" Garmin chartplotter), angled the unit toward me and was painted to match my gel.