In last week's post we looked at home Smart Home Hubs can help people - especially with memory and attention/focus issues manage their lives more easily and reduce the overall stress of daily living. This week we are looking at smart security and how it too can provide precious peace of mind - not just for people with disabilities, but also their families and support networks.
It's a question that often crops up with our clients - especially those that spend time alone at home - "how do I ensure my home is safe and secure".
Smart security has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past few years, so it' a good time to have a look at what's available and how it can help people with disabilities live more enabled and anxiety-free lives.
Locking Up
Today's smart locks have finally started to live up to the hype that surrounded smart home tech when it first started to become mainstream a few years back. With a good quality smart lock today you can do things which would have counted as science fiction just a few years ago.
Welcome Home
Meet John. John has mobility problems that mean getting his front door key and putting them in the lock is a pain. He's a highly independent person, but he wishes there was a way around this annoying daily struggle.
Many of today's Smart Locks have the ability to be paired with our smartphones with Bluetooth and set up so that the door unlocks automatically when it senses that you are close. Or you can unlock the door by tapping a button in an app.
And there's nothing like the feeling of being able to switch on the outside light and unlock the front door from the safety of your car before you get out. Especially if you are getting out with a couple of bags of groceries.
There's an App for That
Jill uses a wheelchair, but works in an office in the city. Jill has a number of support workers who visit her home - often when she's not there. Jill is worried about handing out lots of copies of her house keys and how she's going to keep track of them. Not to mention the expense and inconvenience of getting them cut.
Jill also suffers from anxiety and frequently has a nagging sensation that she's left the house unlocked.
With a Smart Lock, Jill can lock and unlock her door remotely so that when one of her support workers contacts her at work needing to deliver her groceries she can let him in with a tap in her app.
She can also issue one-time or ongoing access codes to other people.
Let's say a handy-person is coming she to do some maintenance, Jill can send her a code that will unlock the door, but only once.
If her cleaner comes at 2pm on Mondays, Jill can issue him with a code that only works to unlock the door on Mondays between 1.45pm and 2.15pm. Added bonus - she can see what time the door was unlocked and locked back up. So if she's paying for the cleaner to clean til 4pm and the house is locked up by 3.30 - she'll know.
And that anxiety that she's left the house unlocked? All gone. Now she can check on her Smart Lock App that the door is locked - and if it isn't she can lock it from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection?
Thanks for listening!
Gregan
Comments