Does Connected Home Security Actually Make Us Safer?

Securing your home adjoin intruders acclimated to be as simple as barring your doors and locking your windows. But home automation services—offering aggregate from limited ecology to keyless aperture locks—have revolutionized how we fortify our houses. Are these new systems any bigger at attention us?

We saw several new casework endure anniversary at CES 2013. Here are three we anticipate a lot of homeowners will install in their homes—and on their tablets and phones—in the advancing year:

ADT's Safewatch package

Starting at $300, added $43 for the company's Pulse limited ecology service, ADT's Safewatch includes window and aperture sensors, an autogenous alarm, and motion detector admitting you can acquirement ablaze timers, bottle breach detectors, and aggregation of added sensors separately. These accessories acquaint application Z-wave and can be controlled by Android, iOS, and Blackberry accessories as able-bodied as through the ADT Pulse web portal.

The Iris Safe and Defended kit from Lowes

For $179, you get two door/window sensors, a motion detector, and keypad. It's beneath big-ticket than ADT, and basal ecology is free. But the arrangement notifies alone you—not law enforcement—when break-ins or added emergencies occur. However, the Iris arrangement can accommodate with any accessory that uses either Zigbee or Z-wave connectivity, which makes it added able and easier to accommodate with absolute home automation systems. Users can accidentally actuate and ascendancy the arrangement through Iris' web aperture or on any iOS device. We advised a agnate kit by the aforementioned architect aback in November.

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Schlage Nexia Home Intelligence

Mixing old-school accouterments and the connectivity of a avant-garde smartphone, the Schlage Nexia Home Intelligence kit appearance a six butt barricade and ablaze timer. This kit retails for $300, but added devices, from thermostats to motion sensors, are accessible separately. The Nexia home intelligence arrangement uses Z-wave to communicate. Limited ecology is accessible for $9 a month, and it works on iPhones, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry devices. There's aswell a basal web portal.

Do you charge one?

These are just a few of the aggregation of aggressive casework and articles on the bazaar today. Anniversary claims to accomplish your activity easier, your ancestors safer, and your backing added secure. But do they absolutely beat accepted measures? Is a barricade absolutely bigger if you can butt-dial it? Is it added vulnerable?

With home security, it's appetizing to wish to await on technology for this affectionate of accord of mind. Our take—and we allure experts in home aegis to counterbalance in—is that these feature-filled accessories apparently will not hurt, and they can even help. But they're alone advantageous as a way to enhance (and not replace) acceptable home aegis practices.

If you've got a acute home (or just a absolutely able foreground door), let us apperceive how it's alive out for you!

Image: Lisa S. / Shutterstock

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