Alarm System
The home alarm system can be used for much more than catching a burglary attempt. Your alarm system is always on, even if the house is not armed. The sensors built into the doors, windows and many other places, continuously report their status. A well designed smart home, can utilize those signals. The following feature list is what we believe would be a good start to utilize the alarm system in a smart home
- Direct Link between the Alarm System and the Smart Home Control Center
- Return path from the smart home system for triggering special alarms
- Virtual Keypads on Smart Home Control Screens
To exchange information, the smart home system has to have access to the alarm system. This is a safe and proven practice.
If you pay for alarm monitoring, you can make that subscription even more valuable. If the smart home system captures a possible hazard or a suspicious activity, a return path can be used to send an alarm signal to the monitoring center, even if the failed device is not directly connected to the alarm system.
A typical smart home system includes one or more touch screen control terminals located in the main areas of the house. Using them as an alarm virtual keypads, allows you to arm and disarm the alarm system, without going to an actual alarm keypad. You can reduce the number of physical alarm keypads (We usually keep only one. If the smart home is unable to connect to the alarm system you still have a backup)
Video Surveillance
Cameras in the last few years became extremely powerful. With their high picture resolution, built in microphone, night vision and motion detection features, they are perfect for effective surveillance. If done right, besides being an effective deterrent to burglars, surveillance can provide many benefits to the home owner.
A Touch of Smart
A custom built smart home system can combine a lot of other features of the house with the surveillance equipment, making it even more powerful. We do not reveal any more details here, because that is for your eyes only! If you would like to know more, please feel free to Contact us.
Keyless Entry
Keyless entry is deemed to be safe, and it is also very popular. Motorized door locks with a built-in keypad can be purchased in any hardware store. Most of them even have a smart phone app to manage it. Great, now you have one more app to control your "smart" home. You already have one app for the lights, another one for the thermostat, another for the alarm system, and so on.
Integration is key
In a custom built smart home, motorized door locks are deeply integrated into the control system. And they work from one single app! If you lose an access card or a key fob, you can deactivate it within minutes, even if you lost your smart phone with it. Simply call your smart home from any old phone to create a new pass code, deactivate the lost access card and disable the smart phone access control as well.
Safety First
Smart homes can make door controls safe and easy. The risk of getting broken into your smart home, by tricking out the entry system, can be very low. We have developed a multi-layer entry protocl which can further increase the safety of keyless entry.
Getting in and out of your smart home
To get in, your smart home has to be able to positively indentify you and any other authorized users. This can be done in many different ways. The most commonly used devices to indentify a suer are: keypads, fobs, smart keys and biometrics (fingerprint, voiceprint, etc.)
Once the identification is complete, the smart home can disengage the door locking mechanism and allow entry to the house.
When entering or leaving, the house system can perform many other convenience functions automatically.
Upon Entry:
- turn up the heating
- turn the music on
- turn on the lights
When Leaving:
- turn down the heating
- mute the music
- turn off the lights
Events Logging
To further enhance security, the smart home system can log the entry and exit events. If needed, it can also send notifications of attempted entry without success to detect intrusions.