A month or so ago, we posted about New Alarm.com Features that can add security to your home. We’ve long pointed out the added security and convenience that comes with monitoring your alarm system with an interactive cellular dialer. Our preferred cellular dialer is powered by Alarm.com, so we can offer all of the services that Alarm.com offers. That post in particular focused mainly on the “latest and greatest” of these offerings. However, Alarm.com has a long history of creating innovative security features. In particular, families often take advantage of Alarm.com’s child security features.
Family safety has long remained one of the most popular reasons to install a home security system. In this post, we wish to share some Alarm.com features that can help you achieve this goal. Specifically, we’ll focus on some ways that our interactive cellular dialer can add child security features for your home. We’ll begin by discussing how to set up your Alarm.com notifications to keep you informed as your kids enter and leave the house. From there, we’ll focus on installing equipment that connects you more closely to your home while you leave the children home alone. Finally, we’ll examine how to add child security by tracking and controlling who enters your home. Let’s begin with a look at using Alarm.com notifications to keep you informed about your kids’ interactions with your security system.
Create Notifications that Keep You in the Know
The ability to receive alarm notifications alone prompts many of our customers to add interactive cell monitoring. When we set up an Alarm.com account for our customers, we also work with them to create custom alerts. These notifications can include “arm/disarm” alerts that help you know when your children enter and leave the home by tracking security system activity. Additionally, you can create alerts based on both activity and inactivity. For example, you may expect your children home by 4pm. If your alarm remains armed after 4pm, you will receive an alert to let you know.
Our post on Geo Services also details how you can use that specific feature to add location-based notifications. Geo Services use GPS technology to detect when residents of a home enter or exit a pre-determined radius around the home itself. This can allow you to create notifications based on your children’s location rather than time of day. For example, you can create notifications that alert you if your child left the home without arming the security system. In this way, Alarm.com notifications use alarm activity and your kids’ personal location to help you track your children’s comings and goings. Let’s look at how you can add security equipment that uses your custom alerts to add even more child security features to your alarm.
Many families increase child security by using contact sensor notifications to track their children’s movements.
Use Contact Sensors to Track Your Kids’ Movement
Contact sensors on doors and windows create the building block of just about any security system. However, as we discussed in our post on Unconventional Uses for Contact Sensors, you can use them these sensors in just about any area of your home. In addition to alarm alerts and arming/disarming alerts, you can also create alerts to let you know when someone has opened any door with a sensor. Many customers install sensors on surrounding sensitive areas of their homes or yards. For example, swimming pool gates make a good spot for a contact sensor for families with young children.
Additionally, installing contacts on bedroom or closet doors can let you know if your kids attempt to snoop into forbidden areas of the home. Also consider adding contact sensors to non-conventional locations. Cabinets that hold jewelry, liquor, or medicine all deserve extra attention as well. The ability to receive an instant alert to any potentially dangerous or harmful activity makes installing contact sensors a very popular security measure for parents. Let’s look at another Alarm.com feature that you can use to add child safety and overall security to your home.
Add a Camera to Check in on Your Family
An Alarm.com camera adds both child security and peace of mind in a few unique ways. For one, you can look in on this camera at any time. Always having an eye in your home helps you feel more connected to your family. Additionally, Alarm.com cameras record motion-based clips that remain stored in your Alarm.com account for a month. If anything involving your children happens in your absence, you can go back and see exactly what occurred.
Alarm.com cameras allow you to check in on your kids from anywhere, at any time.
Furthermore, these cameras can send live video directly to your phone during scheduled windows of time. If you expect your children home from school between 3 and 3:10, you can enter that event on your schedule. During that window, any live video of your kids returning home from school will be sent directly to your phone. The ability to monitor a home through recorded footage and have live footage sent to you in real time help make these cameras a popular way to add child safety features to your alarm. Now let’s look at some tips that help you monitor one of the most important areas of your home: the front door.
Install Door Equipment to Add Security
For good reason, door security remains one of the top overall security focuses for homeowners. Parents, especially, wish to track the comings and goings of both children and guests. When children are home alone, this desire increases tremendously. In this section, we will discuss a couple ideas for adding door security — and therefore child security — to your home.
Smart Locks
Smart locks create security in a few unique ways. For one, they eliminate the need to hand out spare keys. Growing up, my family gave spare keys to me and my siblings, as well as to our neighbors. If we lost the spare key, we went to the neighbors’ house to get the “backup” spare key. At this point, we’d need to make another copy of the spare to give our neighbors. Over time, several copies of our house key went missing. Obviously, any one of these keys landing in the wrong hands could have led to an easy burglary. Installing a smart lock efficiently allows your children entry without the risk of losing keys.
Additionally, Alarm.com smart locks allow you to lock and unlock your door remotely and track access to your lock. If the last person in your house forgot to lock the door on the way out, no worries. Simply open your Alarm.com app and use your phone to lock the door. Likewise, if a contractor or other worker needs to access your home in an emergency, you can provide it without giving away a key or an unlocking code. You can even create a notification if nobody locks the door by a specific time. The level of customization and control that smart locks offer can create both security and peace of mind.
A doorbell camera allows you to answer the door remotely, allowing your kids to ignore the doorbell while home alone.
Doorbell Cameras
Installing a doorbell camera adds child security by allowing you to answer the door remotely. Parents often instruct children not to answer the door while home alone. However, things can get tricky if your children expect company or if they plan to get picked up for an after-school event. A doorbell camera that calls you when someone rings the doorbell solves this issue. Now you can have a face-to-face conversation with any visitor to your home.
Furthermore, your doorbell camera also functions as a regular Alarm.com camera. By capturing motion-based video clips, your doorbell camera provides security even without activation by a guest at your home. This can help catch package thieves or potential burglars snooping around the house. A few months ago, we wrote about How to Spot (and Stop) Burglars in Disguise. In that post, we pointed out that many burglars knock on doors and ring on doorbells before attempting a break-in. Doing so and finding a doorbell camera can thwart would-be thieves who now realize that they are on camera. The ability to monitor such an important area of your home so closely adds a tremendous amount of child safety and home security.
Putting it All Together to Add Child Security to Your Home
We hope that this post has given you some ideas on how to add child security to your home. Having children at home drives many families’ decisions to install security in the first place. Therefore, taking advantage of technological advances that add to this security only makes sense. If you have any questions about any material in this post, or about security in general, we encourage you to contact us. Perhaps you have a security system and wish to add these Alarm.com features. Or maybe you are in the market for an alarm system and want to make sure you understand all of your options. Regardless, we will provide a free home site survey to evaluate your security needs. Together we can create a plan that provides as much security for you and your family as possible.