How to keep your elderly parents safe with home security systems.

Parents and grandparents sacrifice a great amount to make sure their children and grandchildren are as safe as possible. It’s only right to repay the favor as they grow elderly. While many elderly people are put into senior living communities, others prefer to live on their own. 61% of seniors would prefer to age at home, perhaps with a caregiver, according to the American Psychology Association.

Just because they want to maintain their independence doesn’t mean that you can’t keep an eye on them though. Home security systems and smart cams have advanced features that can be used to monitor their wellbeing, so you can check in on them digitally whenever you need to. Whether you have a wired or wireless system, these are the features you should look out for.

Remote 911

One of the biggest dangers for elderly people is falling. 1 in 4 elderly Americans falls each year, according to the Center for Disease Control, and falling once doubles your risk of falling again. That can lead to an increased chance of head injury, broken bones or worse.

Remote 911, available for Ooma Home Security, is a good way to keep an eye on your parent or grandparent. Remote 911 will let you call 911 from anywhere, just  as if you were home. Once you call, first responders will be dispatched immediately to your home.

So if you have some smart cameras stationed around your loved one’s home, and you see that they’ve fallen and can’t get up, you can call 911 for them and have them dispatched to their home right away for help.

Instant Alerts

To keep an eye on your loved ones, you’re going to need to know what’s going on at their home. With the Ooma Smart Security app on your iOS (Apple) or Android device, you can get alerts on everything that’s going on – instantly.

This allows you to make sure that your parent or grandparent is protected from external threats using a wide array of sensors. These include water leak sensors, motion sensors and smoke detectors.

You’ll be informed if there’s a burglar in the middle of the night trying to break in, or a clogged toilet, or even a fire. If anything happens, you’ll know.

Facial Recognition

If you want some simple peace of mind on your parents or grandparents safety, a smart cam with facial recognition can come in extremely handy.

With facial recognition, you can train your smart camera to recognize your loved one’s faces. It can then send you an alert every time it sees them walk around. This way, a small notification can quickly and easily let you know that they’re okay.

You can even get some context based on where you put the camera. If you put it inside, you know that they’re up and about and doing their daily tasks. If you put it outside, you know when they get home safely after going out.

Two-Way Talk

It’s one thing to monitor your loved ones from afar, it’s another thing to pick up the phone and give them a call. With two-way talk you can simply start talking to them right away.

So if your camera sees that they’ve entered the kitchen in the morning, you can give them a quick hello to check in on how they’re doing – and they’ll be able to easily reply, without having to pick up a phone and distract from what they’re doing.

Automatic Arming and Disarming

Memories are fickle things, and it doesn’t get better as you get older. If you get an Ooma Smart Security system for your parents or grandparents, Automatic Arm and Disarm can be a good way to help them make sure the system is armed when they’re away, and disarmed when they’re home.

It uses the GPS location of their smartphone to determine when they’re home and when they’re away, and will take care of the arming automatically for them. Alternatively, if your parents or grandparents live with you and you want to make sure they’re save while you’re off at work all day, you can set it up with your own phone so that you don’t forget.