Home security is important in making sure you feel comfortable, safe and stress free in your household. It’s especially important if you’re taking care of children, pets or the elderly, you want to make sure that even when away from your house that everyone is taken care of. If you’re worried about people potentially sneaking into your home, you want to monitor what’s going on within your house or make sure that your elderly family members can get emergency help if they need it, there are many options for you. Here I will outline some of main uses of home security systems, the different types out there and some of the options you have for the common use cases that people have.
Types of Home Security Systems
Smart Home Automation
These are security systems that revolve around your families schedule and automate certain tasks. These provide a sort of futuristic experience where we can do many different things through our phone without having to move from where we are in the house.
Examples
Smart Doorbells
These place a small camera in the doorbell button, when someone approaches the door or rings the doorbell it sends an alert to your phone. It activates the camera and you have a clear picture of who is at the door.
Smart Locks
Smart locks replace traditional locks by allowing you to lock or unlock doors using your smartphone via Wi-Fi or bluetooth. They can also be set up to automatically lock or unlock doors as you approach so you don’t even need to think about it. If it’s your preference they can be set up to accept keys or pin combinations if you also want this option.
Smart Lock @ aliexpress
Smart Thermostats
These devices help to conserve energy, which is good for the environment and saves you money. It allows you to control the temperature of your house through an app on your smartphone, allowing you to change temperature from anywhere in the house at any time. They also have a machine learning element, where it can learn your preferences such as what your preferred temperatures are at certain times of the day and when you’re home or not. It has been noted that it can reduce energy consumption by as much as 30%. Lastly, it can send an alert if temperatures get unusually high or low, which warns of a potential fire or freezing pipes.
Security Equipment
This refers to traditional home security devices that are designed to detect or prevent intrusion, theft or vandalism. They are mostly based on detection and set off an alarm if someone comes into your house without permission and alerts a monitoring center that can send law enforcement to your house/property.
Examples
Burglar Alarms
Burglar alarms alert you to someone getting into your house by monitoring when a window or door is opened while the system is armed. It works by creating an electric circuit, either open or closed. A closed circuit is more common and is triggered when a window or door is opened or if the power is cut off. While open-circuit is only triggered if a window or door is opened.
Glass Break Detectors
A glass break detector(sensor) is a type of detector that sounds when glass is broken. It works along with motion sensors, windows sensors and door sensors to notify you whenever someone breaks into your house. They not only detect when glass is broken but also sliding glass doors. Most glass break sensors use an audio microphone that recognizes the frequency of broken glass and sounds an alarm. Most sensors have a range of several feet and can be placed in a room to monitor several windows.
Glass Break Detector @ zionssecurity
Environmental Monitoring
This includes monitoring your house for changes in the environment that could cause damage to the building or the people inside. Some common things you can to check for include fires or freezing temperatures because of the damage it can do to your pipes. You may also want to watch people within the house such as children, elderly people or pets to make sure nothing happens to them when you’re in another room or out of the house.
Examples
Smoke Alarms and Freeze Sensors
These two devices work together to warn you of any extreme changes in temperature. A smoke alarm detects the presence of smoke, which alerts you to potential fire in your house. A freeze sensor sends out an alert when the temperature drops below a threshold, that way you can take the proper steps to prevent your pipes from freezing and change the temperature before it negatively affects anyone in the house, especially children or the elderly.
Panic Pendant
This is a small portable, battery operated device that ensures that the wearer always has access to the help that they need during an emergency, such as a break-in or a debilitating fall. This is particularly useful for taking care of elderly family members that are prone to falling and hurting themselves. The user just needs to push the button and a signal is sent back to the monitoring professional who will determine what type of help the person needs e.g. fire department, medical help or law enforcement and issues that request. An LED flashes to let the wearer know when help has been sent.
A panic pendant @ Vitex Systems
Motion Sensors
This is a device that uses one or more technologies to detect movement and triggers an alarm. It’s one of the best ways to know when someone is inside your house that shouldn’t be there, or moving around the house when they shouldn’t be. Once the motion sensor detects movement it trips an alarm that usually makes a loud noise alerting you to the intrusion and sends a message to the monitoring center of a potential intruder to your home.
Recap
Home Security is all about making your home more safe and comfortable. There are three primary types of home security systems: home automation, traditional security equipment and environmental monitoring. Automation focuses on creating a “Smart house” by modernizing many traditional security features of the house and centralizing it through your smartphone. Allowing you to unlock doors, change the temperature, turn lights on and off on a schedule, either through your phone or on an automated schedule. Next is security equipment which detects when someone is trying to enter your house and sets off an alarm notifying you and the monitoring center of your provider. Lastly are environmental monitors, these typically monitor for extreme temperature changes or provide surveillance for the people within the house. This can be watching babysitters with your kids, watching your pets while away or giving an elderly person a means to contact emergency services if they suffer a bad fall.