Safe With Smart Home Technology

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 18:51:08 GMT

Simple solutions to help you feel safe at home...

At Signal Flow our job is to make your home technology work together seamlessly, helping you live your best life.

A big part of this involves making you feel safe and secure at home.

Home security has evolved way beyond a single intruder alarm, smart home technology allows your property to stay alert in ways you may not have considered. We now have the ability to keep your home awake and imitate your everyday routine, are you home or away - who knows?

Here are just a few examples of what is possible with an Integrated system:

Intercoms & Smart Door Bells

Communicate with your front door even when away from home, we can link the doorbell to bedroom lights so if someone rings at night the lights will turn on while you're away from home

Smart Lighting & Motorised Shades

Record your daily routine to play back and simulate occupancy when away from home - lights turning on/off & blinds open/close with subtle variations so it's not the same pattern every day.

Smart Heating

When a smart heating systems stops detecting presence it can activate your "away" schedule if you forgot - both secure and energy efficient.

All of the above solutions can be connected to a "Home/Away" button by your front door or linked to your alarm system's armed/disarmed status

Signal Flow specialise in turnkey integrated technology solutions, bespoke to our customer's needs and lifestyle requirements. However, before using our services and making the investment in a fully automated home, there are many products to whet your Smart Home appetite that you can install yourself to enhance your home security.

Here are our DIY favourites:

1. Ring Door Bell

One of the first and best known Smart Doorbells

2. Philips Hue Lig hting

Simple to install, replaces your conventional lightbulbs, control from your phone and set schedules

3. TP Link Kasa Smart Plugs

Schedule & Control your plug-in devices such as lamps and the all-important Christmas lights at this festive time of year

4. Amazon Alexa

Alexa need's no introduction, but turning lights on and off with your voice never gets boring!

All of these items can be integrated in to a whole home control solution by Signal Flow once you've got the bug...

Get in touch to find out more

No More Buffering

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 13:34:02 GMT

Full bars of signal in any room and even the garden...

In the 21st century more and more connected devices are brought into our homes. Due to the recent necessity to work from home many homeowners are discovering that their internet is becoming less reliable. Typically the problem isn’t with the devices themselves or the speed of the connection entering the home, rather with the way homes are configured.

The construction of homes hasn’t changed massively in recent years, but the way we use the internet significantly has. Usually phone lines enter the home at the front of a property and this is where the router is situated. If you imagine WiFi signal reaching out around the router in a circle, half of the coverage will be wasted in your front garden.

A typical router in a 3 bed semi under 2000sq ft. with a couple of laptops and smartphones using wireless everything will usually work fine. But as soon as you add a smart TV streaming service, a smart speaker or 4K games console, WiFi speeds can become very unstable. Nobody wants to see that buffering circle in the middle of an important Teams call or a movie night cliffhanger!

The best way to have full coverage across your home is to have one or more “wireless access points” located around the home and wired back to a central point. The same way it’s set up in Hotels, Restaurants and when we used to work in Offices?! In the larger homes we work on at Signal Flow we often need 2 to 4 of these devices to give adequate WiFi coverage around the property. On our biggest project to date we installed 11 across 4 floors and one outbuilding.

These smart WiFi systems present themselves as one wireless network, so no matter where you are in the property your portable device will automatically be moved on to the access point with the strongest signal. No more fumbling on your phone trying to connect to the “Upstairs Booster” to check the football scores, it just works!

We’re often told - “isn’t everything wireless these days?”. Whilst this is partly true - more devices are WiFi compatible than ever, that doesn’t mean this should always be their default method of connection. Generally speaking, if a device doesn’t move; Smart TV’s, Games Consoles, Set Top Boxes, Desktop PCs, Printers etc. it should be connected directly to the internet and not using wireless. Most gaming experts would tell you, you must have a wired connection for latency-free play without wireless interference.

A solid cabled infrastructure is something we insist on installing in every job. This means ensuring there is a physical cable installed to every location within the home where you might need an internet connection. This is then run back to a central point and terminated onto patch panels so any device can easily be connected whether it be the day you move in or in the future when you might get the urge to convert the loft into a home cinema or need a bigger home office.

We can’t emphasise enough the importance of getting the right cabling installed during the early stages of a new build or renovation - usually at the same time a plumber or electrician would do their first fix. Whilst we have techniques to retrofit cabling and technology at any time, it’s always less disruptive and more cost-effective when it’s been thought about early in a project.

At Signal Flow we can specify all the necessary cabling for a future-ready home with drawings and documentation ready for when you want to kit out your home with the latest technology. We can then ensure that the internet speed that comes in to your home router is the same that reaches your TV and with carefully placed wireless access points we can give you full bars of signal in any room and even the garden if required.

Get in touch to find out more

Smart Home Technology by Signal Flow

Safe With Smart Home Technology

Simple solutions to help you feel safe at home...

No More Buffering

Full bars of signal in any room and even the garden...