Why should my security system be interactive and oh yea, what does it mean?
Until very recently the only way you could access your alarm system was through the keypad, and typically in very limited ways. You could arm and disarm the system, the keypad would tell you if a zone was open, and if an alarm occurred, it would tell you what caused it. Special functions like bypassing zones or seeing trouble signals took various key presses to get to the proper screen. Most keypads were not plain English, meaning you had to memorize what number corresponded to what zone and what trouble code. It could be confusing.
Enter today’s modern security system. They come with color graphic displays spelling everything out in everyday English. They prompt you for what to do next. Couple that with cellular connectivity, and every smart phone, tablet, and computer can become a keypad. Cellular connectivity gives you a virtually always on connection to your alarm system. Every event, doors opening and closing, the alarm being armed or disarmed, trouble signals, people walking in front of motion detectors, is transmitted to the data center. All that information is accessible by you, 24 hours a day from any internet connected device. You can also get that information, as it occurs via text message or email. You can also be notified if something doesn’t occur – for example if you would like to be notified when your kids get home from school, you can. You can also be notified if they don’t get home by a certain time.
In the old days, 3 years ago, if you owned a store and wanted to know when what time your store was actually opened and closed, you would have to sign up for open and closing reports and your alarm system would dial into the central station via phone lines every time somebody armed or disarmed the system. You would then receive reports either weekly or monthly. Now you get that information as it happens. From a home owner’s perspective, you can tell how long the cleaning people really stayed in your home and when the dog walker shows up to take your dog out. This information is available to you as it happens, simply by getting an email or text seconds after the event. If you would prefer, you can simply open the app and see the history of your account.
There are more benefits as well. I tend to forget to close my overhead garage door after I enter my house. On more than one occasion I woke up in the morning realizing that the door was open all night. Now I have a sensor on that door and I set the system to notify me by text if the door remains open for more than 20 minutes, problem solved. You can even take it a step further but that is a topic for another post.
From a convenience point of view you can log on and see if your system is armed or disarmed and either arm or disarm it remotely. You can disarm your system to give people access to your house if necessary.
An interactive system can do many more things including thermostat control, turning lights on and off, locking and unlocking doors, opening your garage door and closing it. These functions can be scheduled easily and securely via your user portal on the internet. You can also control all these functions from your smart phone. I’ll go into more detail in an upcoming post.
If you would like more information and live in central or northern New Jersey, please give us call at 800-369-3962 or simply click the link below.
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