The problem with most alarms is that it’s cumbersome to operate, so you tend to forget to activate it. Alarmhandler – the innovative video alarm app – is now out in version 3.0 – and automatically controls your cameras from your pocket!
The first video alarm app
There are several video recording services out there, but they don’t use the alarm metaphor to make it simple to turn all cameras on or off. Alarmhandler was the first video camera recording service to provide a simple user interface for doing this – a video alarm app. Even so, wouldn’t your home be more safe if you didn’t have to remember to turn the alarm on and off?
Never forget the alarm again
A problem with app based alarms is the fact that you don’t see a physical control panel next to the door. This means you’re not reminded to turn on surveillance and you’re likely to forget to use the alarm a lot of the time. The obvious fix for this is to make the alarm automatic based on the presence of the inhabitants. That’s what we’ve built into the next generation of Alarmhandler – the innovative video alarm app.
Using energy-efficient geofences
You might ask, how can the alarm be automatic? This might be done by various methods, but in Alarmhandler we’ve chosen to use geofencing technology. Alarmhandler uses the location of your home and of the inhabitant phones to determine if someone is at home or not. Monitoring the geolocation of a phone could raise worries about power-consumption and privacy. However, the automatic alarm control in Alarmhandler is based on power-efficient geofence technology. This means the app creates a virtual fence 100m from your estate on the phone. When crossing the fence, the app briefly awakens and makes a short call to the Alarmhandler servers. The servers then determine what should happen.
How it works
The system counts how many persons are inside and outside the home. When the last person leaves the estate area, the alarm is armed. When the first person arrives in the area, the alarm is disarmed. Only users who opt in on the user settings page are counted.
Know when kids come home from school
You can choose not to activate auto on/off for some users that should not control the monitoring status. For instance, you might skip children and let the system alert the adults, e.g. to let them know kids are home from school. Remember, Alarmhandler is a silent alarm system so you should not worry about anyone activating the system by mistake. A parent can check the alarm, and then just turn the alarm off.
How do I activate automatic alarm control?
For each user, activate Auto on/off under Menu – Settings – User settings. The app might prompt for permissions when activating the setting – please allow the phone access to your geolocation and running in the background. Remember, the app will not run continuously in the background, just be briefly started when crossing the geofence.
What’s happening in the background?
Once the users start crossing the “geofence”, the system might turn the alarm if all users are out. You can view all alarm activities under Menu – Log. For instance, the last user to leave home will trigger the alarm to switch on, this is visible as “Alarm on (username)” entry in the log.
Can I override the automatic alarm control?
Yes, you just start the app and press ON or OFF to change the alarm state as you would normally do.
Using Alarmhandler with an existing SMS alarm
If you’re using Alarmhandler in conjunction with a traditional SMS based alarm, you’ll be happy to know that the new geofencing feature makes your everyday life much simpler. There’s no need to activate two systems at once when leaving home, as Alarmhandler now activates itself when the last person leaves home. The person now just has to actiavate the traditional alarm e.g. using a control panel next to your door. If the traditional alarm goes off, you’re sure that Alarmhandler will start recording as the sirens will be picked up sound sensors in the cameras. Alarmhandler secures evidence on the Alarmhandler servers of what happens and allows you to playback the recordings at any time later on.
Improved playback of recordings
We’ve also cleaned up the status screen a bit. Instead of showing a long list of all available recording on the status screen, just one entry per camera is shown indicating when the last recording was made. This makes it easy to see which cameras have picked up something when an alarm was triggered.
Tap the recording leads to an updated playback screen, where you may select other recordings from the same camera under the image area. The context menu top right allows mailing for safe keeping or deleting old recordings.
Note: Recordings are automatically deleted after 30 days as before, so you don’t normally need to spend time on deleting old recordings.
We hope you like the update, please write to let us know what you think on our social media channels or using the Send Message function on our homepage. Thanks!
Kind regards
The Alarmhandler Team
