Making Your Life More Secure
Integrated Safety for Peace of Mind.
At sunset your outside lights turn on, the window shades close and your house automatically locks the doors. When you are ready for bed, you press your “Goodnight” button and all of the lights in the house shut down, the temperature resets and the alarm arms. Each part of the day brings a different scenario. Your house knows what to do and you are confident that your family is safe.
We all have concerns, whether it’s wondering if our homes are secure, or knowing that our business is protected against damage and loss. Integrated security systems allow us to achieve peace of mind like never before. Integrated security can incorporate many types of access controls, deterrence and monitoring into your overall smart home experience.
What’s possible?
Let’s look at some of the key choices to consider when defining what security means to you:
- Access controls – Your child comes home from college when you’re away, your gardener works every other Tuesday, the cleaning crew comes to your office from 6-8PM. How do you control access to your home or business remotely?
- Video monitoring – Do you want cameras to be a visible deterrent to people who walk by your home? Do you need discreet “nanny cams” inside your house? Do you want high-resolution playback of activity outside your business at night?
- Intrusion detection – Should you monitor all windows and doors or just your front door? Do you want a phone call or text if someone breaks a window or enters your house?
- Integration – These systems should be carefully planned and integrated with control systems in order to be useful and the wide range in cost depends on how elaborate the system design becomes.
How to do integrated security right
Access Controls – Keyless entry is one of the most used and most important technologies in your home. At the simplest, it is a replacement for keys and traditional locks. That alone is significant – no more replacing keys, locks and locksmiths. With implementation of the most basic access control technology, you gain the ability to manage an individual’s entry or exit access at specific locations, as well as knowing the time and date of entry. It is also important to consider whether you want live video intercom capability to see the person at your front gate. We link Access Controls to the entire smart house system for true home automation.
Cameras – Our camera systems enable you to monitor everything that happens in your home or business. See who is at the front door, check on your baby in the nursery, or watch your children play in the yard from any TV or mobile device. Better yet, we can ‘train’ the system to detect what matters to you. Children in the pool area? Our system will send you an alert. No need to keep checking on the house – let the house notify you. Our cameras record high-definition images, allowing you to see facial details and the numbers on a license plate. It is important to select the right camera and storage solution based on your requirements. Quality, performance and reliability of cameras can vary. Resolution ranges from 1 to 8 Megapixels, night vision can be impressive or unusable (inexpensive cameras may only have a range of 10-20ft). Live images might look good but quality of playback may not (the difference between knowing that someone entered your house and knowing who entered your house). Weather-resistance is important – lower-quality outdoor cameras don’t last, while better cameras have anti-fogging devices built in.
Alarm systems – When designing an alarm system, consider how many access points you want to monitor with sensors – windows and door contacts, motion detectors and glass break sensors. Some alarm companies install poor quality wireless sensors to save themselves time and cost. In many cases, hard-wiring is more reliable and safer. For all of these devices, the design and quality of your installation is critical. Put door and window contacts or glass break sensor in the wrong place and they just won’t work. Inexperienced installers can easily damage your expensive windows when they drill for alarm contacts.
Monitoring service – Third party monitoring is a great way to achieve peace of mind. It is important to consider what kind of service you need. We offer several options and service levels with land line, cellular communication and the ability to tie into customized SMS messaging.
Integration – Tap an icon on your touchscreen to see a live video feed of your child’s play area, check your phone to see what happened outside your garage on Sunday night, or change the passcode of your gate so your in-laws can get in to the house next weekend. All of this is possible with today’s smart home technologies and a well-designed implementation.