You might be considering to secure your home with a traditional alarm service. Here’s how Alarmhandler can offer more value for money:

• Many alarm services use specialized alarm hardware that they install and service for you as long as you’re a subscriber. You might pay a signup fee, but that does not cover the full equipment and installation cost. Instead you pay for the equipment and installation as part of your monthly subscription fee. If you’re a subscriber for a long period, you effectively pay the alarm many times over. If you cancel the subscription, the alarm is dismantled by the alarm company leaving you with nothing. With Alarmhandler you purchase your own inexpensive and maintenance free IP cameras, and if you cancel your subscription, you still own them and can use them with another online service.
• For private customers, most alarm services send out a security guard to check on alarms on a best effort Service Level Agreement (SLA). This means that business alarm customers that typically have a time specific SLA will get serviced before you, as the alarm company will be penalized if they use long time to respond. With Alarmhandler, we’ve also gone for best effort response, but instead of basing it on expensive paid security guards, the inhabitants or neighbours constitute the response team. This means that there is no guaranteed response time, but if anyone you have given access to the app can see something is not right using the recordings, and they are nearby, they can check up on your estate and alert police or fire brigade in minutes. This is almost never possible with paid security guards that have large areas to cover!
• For most alarm services, traditional magnet contacts are mounted on doors/windows and infrared sensors are used to monitor space inside your estate. This is stable and well-known technology, but if you want to validate alarms and check video recordings, you need to purchase additional photo sensors working with the other alarm hardware – and pay a premium monthly charge per photo sensor added. With Alarmhandler, we use inexpensive IP cameras not only as sensors but also for recording during events. And no extra charge!
• Many alarm services charge you extra per month if you add more sensors, Alarmhandler has a flat monthly fee as long as you respect our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

Many IP camera owners subscribe to cloud based camera recording services, as camera vendor normally just provide live streaming. However, the recording services focus on using cameras for surveillance and continuous recording, which is not really what home owners who don’t want to feel watched all the time is looking for. So here’s the different approach taken by Alarmhandler:

• Many camera recording services do not offer a simple and instant detection on/off button – the aim of the service is to do continuous recording which is not suitable for home use. Alarmhandler never records anything, unless you turn recording ON explicitly in the app – and then it only records when motion or sound is detected – meaning you use very little cloud storage space and we can deliver Alarmhandler at a low fee.
• Many camera recording services access your cameras, so they’re in fact opening up your firewall to your home. Alarmhandler is solely based on the cameras connecting to Alarmhandler, not the other way – so nothing is opened up in your home.
• Many camera recording services use ftp transfer from the cameras to the online service, however ftp is not a very secure protocol. Your ftp credentials are passed in free text over the internet when a transfer takes place. Alarmhandler uses email in order to be compatible with more IP cameras, and at the same time the camera can use SSL encrypted lines when submitting recordings.

Most IP cameras can detect motion and send push notifications through an app provided by the camera producer. Some can also send mails with pictures. However, the camera producer apps have many shortcoming, here’s how Alarmhandler meets them:

• The app does not offer a simple and instant detection on/off button – and permanently turning notifications on is very tiresome, as you will get a ton of notifications when you’re at home. Many apps also have a substantial delay from when you turn notification/mails until the service stops sending you messages.
• The apps cannot handle different brands of cameras. It cannot turn monitoring ON/OFF nor receive recordings from more than one brand. Alarmhandler does this.
• The apps cannot group a number of cameras (for an entire estate) and turn all cameras ON/OFF at the same time. Alarmhandler does this.
• The apps only offer one user account for the cameras – multiple users cannot control detection etc. Alarmhandler does this.
• Most apps do not offer to store and replay recordings without a monthly fee. Alarmhandler stores recordings of events for up to 30 days for a fee lower fee – and at the same time offers the other advantages mentioned above.

To receive notifications on iphone, you need to give permissions to Alarmhandler to do so.

PS If you do not receive notifications, you might have used the same account on multiple devices. If you do so, only the last logged device will receive notifications. Create multiple users for the estate in order to receive notifications on all mobile devices belonging to a family.

There’s no control panel as IP cameras are the only hardware you install physically in your estate. Instead you can turn off the alarm using the app before you walk in the door. Since your Alarmhandler is a “silent alarm” you’ll never stress over a siren that goes off, if you forget to turn off the alarm. Instead your phone will just beep and a notification indicates that there is a detection.

To turn the alarm on, then you can do this via the app simply by tapping “Alarm on” eg. just after you have left the property. In the same way, just tap “Alarm off” before entering your home when arriving back.