Technofile

Skylink Security Products Empower Home Owners

by Jim Bray,

January 14, 2005

You’d almost think that with all of the two way home and business security companies advertising you hear these days that there’d be no room for smaller, more personal home protection systems.

But of course you’d be wrong.

I’ve been trying out some elegantly simple home security technologies and, while the ones I’ve been using won’t call the cops if some lowlife tries to break into stately Bray manor, they do let me be the master of my domain as long as I’m around to monitor them.

And in certain applications that could be all you need.

The equipment is from a company called Skylink. They have a bunch of little gadgets you can use to keep an eye on your personal or corporate realm, and the ones I’ve been trying interact with a little base unit that uses LEDs that flash--accompanied by a plaintive beeping noise--if something’s amiss chez vous.

The garage door doohickey is decidedly low tech, other than its wireless transmitter, but it works well. The thing attaches to the bottom of the garage door and, if someone opens it up on you, a little plastic plunger extends--thanks to the law of gravity--and that trips a switch that makes the gadget holler to the base unit for help.

Likewise, they have a little motion detector you can mount outside the house and if someone invades your space it signals the base unit to beep and flash.

I find this idea particularly handy because by putting the base unit in my home theatre and mounting the motion sensor outside the front door, the LED’s on the base unit give me a head’s up if someone arrives while I’m playing music or movies so loud that I can’t hear the doorbell.

Which is all the time…

Skylink has a whole series of such products— including one that’ll raise the alarm if water starts gushing into your basement. It’s kind of neat and I imagine it could bring some peace of mind to people whose basements are prone to flooding.

While the basic system configurations require you to be home to see the lights flash and hear the beeps beep, Skylink (coincidentally, I’m sure) also offers optional equipment that’ll send an emergency phone call to your cell phone, pager, or wherever else you want it to yell for help.

It isn’t the most high tech solution, but it’s an elegantly simple packaging of existing technology. And it shows that, just because something may not be the fanciest trinket on the market, it can still have valid applications in this high tech world.

So forget about planned obsolescence, or Big Brother watching over your home via some expensive, two way security system--though of course such systems also have legitimate uses! But with stuff like these Skylink offerings, you really can do it yourself!

Now, I don't know how systems such as those offered by Skylink stack up when compared to those monitored systems you can subscribe to, since I’ve never tried those arrangements, but there are plenty of applications where Skylink-type devices should work well. Rural areas where monitoring systems may not be available, for example.