Behavioral Problems
Monitoring Kids, Pets, etc.
Unfortunately, not everyone behaves like a mature adult around the house. Children, teens, cognitively-impaired elders, and often pets can get themselves into undesirable, destructive, even unsafe situations, including:
- Places where they shouldn’t go (the cat’s gotten locked in the food closet, again)
- Inappropriate times and places (Grandpa left the back door open and is wandering out in the garden—at midnight)
- Behaviors that can damage your home or contents (the new puppy’s chewing on the lamp cord)
- Circumstances that violate house rules (your 14 year old brings his friends home, hours before you return from work).
- Dangerous behaviors (pre-teens have gotten into the liquor cabinet)
- Attractive nuisances: unsupervised non-adults using the swimming pool, spa, or fire pit.
A number of smart home technologies can be tailored to address these problematic behavioral situations and alert the homeowner. Here are some examples:
- Motion detectors or event counters that detect a possibly problematic situation
- Security cameras that provide visual feedback to interpret the alert detected
- Timers placed on doors to control time-of-day use for: midnight garden walks, access to Grandpa’s snacks, etc.
As caring parents, concerned children of impaired elders, and responsible pet owners, adults have a duty to keep safe and secure those who depend on us the most. Smart home automation systems that include Security Cameras, Access Control, Event Counters & Motion Detectors, and Medical Monitoring technologies can be used creatively to detect and respond to many kinds of potentially problematic behaviors.
For many of these situations, careful analysis by the homeowner (to identify the problem), plus the creativity of the smart home integrator (for installing and programming the devices to address the problem behavior) may be more important than the specific technology itself.