Home Security Arm/Disarm

[jeffr]

I'm confused how to utilize my new Ooma security.

I'm coming from another system. On my old system I could identify a door with a delay. I would arm the system and have 30 seconds to exit. Upon return I would open the same door, the system would beep and I would have 30 seconds to disarm the system.

With Ooma the appears to be no real arm/disarm cycle. Providing I follow the home/away/night cycles all just auto arms and disarms. But my schedule is not always that regular. Is it possible to get a warning on my phone prior to alerting? Maybe a local notification, wait 30 seconds, then send email/sms/whatever notifications of a breach?

[thomasm]

There is an option in the app to disable all alarms for 5 minutes. I would assume this is similar to your exit delay on your old alarm system. When you return home, you can enable the 5 minute delay once again as opposed to entering your code within so many seconds with your old system.

But if you are the only one receiving alerts from Ooma Home Security it would be easier to just let the alerts appear on your phone and then ignore them. As a bonus (that alarm companies charge extra for), you will get a log of each entry/exit event for future reference.

[jeffr]

I'm not the only one with the app. It would be great if the local user could get a notice, insert a 30 second delay, then if not disarmed it would notify everyone else.

[Tom]

before you step inside just open the app and swipe the top banner to home mode

[jeffr]

Opening the phone and changing status before entering the home is clearly a way to do it. But most traditional alarm systems allow you to enter a particular door with a 30-second delay, during which you enter a code an disarm the alarm.

The Ooma system requires you to remember to open the phone app and act prior to entering. I am suggesting this is not optimum, and I can see the second remote user will get a bunch of false alarms. It would be great to have an option to have a 30-second notification option, which if not disarmed sends out a "Alarm/Breach" notification. You could assign this to any trigger device. It could work this way:

- Alarm in Away mode
- Door is opened, Ooma sends a "Need to Disarm notification"
- Ooma then waits 30-seonds, if no disarm then an ALARM notification is triggered.

[AnthonyH]

Hi jeffr, this is Anthony on the product team at Ooma. Thanks for your constructive feedback. I agree that the current mode switch scheme is not the best experience that we can provide yet. Rest assured, we already have an improved mechanism in the works. Specifically, we are working on a way to automatically switch modes based on your smart device's GPS location. When you approach your home, it automatically disarms. When you leave, it automatically arms the system. You can designate which of your smart devices would affect the status of the system. Would that be useful to you?

Thanks for your suggestion about a "need to disarm notification". We considered something similar as an option, but we decided not to implement it for initial release. I can revisit this feature with the team.

[jeffr]

Geofence would be great. If you need a beta tester let me know, I'm quite technical and would be happy to give you guys both debug and constructive comments.

[jeffr]

Just rethinking you comment. "You can designate which device". For this to be useful it would need multiple devices.

If my phone AND wife are outside of geofence then arm. If my phone OR wife is inside geofence then disarm.

[AnthonyH]

Yup, exactly. We're thinking: trigger an event when the last person leaves home, and trigger an event when the first person arrives home.

[homeforus]

that's a great idea