Protecting Your Smart Security Camera From Hackers

smart home security, cctv camera, home cctv, home security,Amazon’s Ring Smart Doorbells and access control have been under scrutiny over the past couple of months because of lapses in security. Most customers have nothing to worry about thanks to several factors, including the scarcity of people with the expertise to be able to bypass the security settings which are in place if customers follow the installation instructions carefully.

However, if you buy a Smart doorbell and don’t update and personalise the security features it’s not very difficult for anyone with a mobile phone to be able to breech your home security systems. As Smart devices, including home security and monitoring become ever more popular it’s natural that the number of devices which are installed poorly or not personalised at all is going to increase. Such an increase makes it possible for the wannabee hacker to travel around looking for systems worth infiltrating and exploiting.

Controlling Who Can Go Where

You can give access to your Smart Doorbell account to a number of different people who will them be able to talk to visitors, let people in, and watch in real time as people move about from their phones or tablets. It makes more sense to add users from an admin than give log in details to others, so for example if you have friends or family come to stay, or you want to give people staying at your house via AirBnB access, you can add them or remove them without having to pass on any log-in details. Read more

Is 5G Bad For Your Health? Is It Safe? What Should We Be Aware Of?

girl phone beach internet accessLooking at social media and the news you’ll no doubt be aware that there are any number of rumours that 5G is dangerous. It causes cancer, leukaemia, it causes infertility and autism. It also causes headaches and premature ageing. And naturally these scare stories are put about by exactly the same people who said exactly the same thing about 4G, 3G, 2G, Wi-Fi, high tension power lines, TV transmitters, rock ‘n roll, and even the train if it went more than twenty miles an hour. And people love to read these stories as it gives them an outside source for their problems. The inexplicable can be explained. People prefer if they can identify causation rather than put cancer or autism down to random chance and the luck of the draw.

That’s not to say there aren’t dangers coming from 5G, but those are far more esoteric.

5G is being introduced as 4G can’t be developed any further without going on to that next stage, and the reason for that is the Smart Home Revolution. We need more and more data to flow through our homes as ever more devices become automated. If each device is going to work correctly in conjunction with all your other devices it will need uninterrupted signal at full capacity whenever and wherever it is called upon. Read more

Can Your Television Receiver Stand Another Storm?

storm, storm damage, fallen, blown, dangerous, aerial, satellite, tv dish, repair, remove, replaceWe’ve had Storm Ciara, and this weekend it looks as if we’re going to have another named storm in the form of Storm Dennis. If your satellite dish or aerial withstood the last gale, could it withstand another one?

TV aerials and satellite dishes work by presenting as large a surface area as possible to the incoming signal. The more signal the better, so you get excellent picture and sound as well as a complete choice of channels. Which is great if you live somewhere that isn’t prone to frequent gales and storms in the winter and up to sixteen hours of intense sunlight in the summer. While it’s calm everything is fine, but when the wind picks up that large surface area acts in exactly the same way as a sail, and it’s only the great job the installer or maintenance engineer did when they last looked at it which keeps it from flying off, potentially causing incalculable damage to anything or anyone it hits along the way.

If your satellite dish or aerial antenna was installed recently it’s probably going to be quite safe and do a fine job of standing up to the weather. If it does happen to move at all it’s no problem for a professional installation and maintenance firm such as Briant Communications to realign the dish or mast so that it picks up signal again. The bigger problem comes from old redundant receivers which aren’t being used any more. It’s a faff to have the old receivers taken down and removed when you’re putting the new one up, so why not leave it in place?

The problem is that you now have an ageing piece of unwanted and untended technology attached to your wall, chimney stack or roof which is still getting battered by the wind and rain. You won’t notice that they’re getting loose because your reception isn’t affected, but a large piece of unsecured metal on the roof poses a huge threat to your house and personal safety! Read more

A New Smart Home Standard Coming Soon

Woman using a digital smart home heating control panelAmazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance plan to draft a new Smart Home System protocol later this year which will create a more universal platform for all smart devices to work on.

Currently a manufacturer locks a device into one ecosystem, and once it’s on it won’t connect with any other. This is bad for consumers as they have to seek out and find the right devices for their home ecosystem, if they get it wrong they have the frustration of having to send it back and get a replacement, assuming one is even available. It’s also bad for manufacturers as they have to spend R&D budget on making multiple device ranges which are compatible for each of the Smart Home networks, or commit to only producing products which ‘play’ with one system. Get it wrong and it’s Betamax and VHS all over again, with time and effort being spent on two competing systems, one of superior quality, but at a high cost, and a cheaper, inferior product which, while perfectly adequate for the home user, wasn’t the premium quality it was possible to produce.

Instead, what is going to happen, is Amazon, Google, Apple and the Zigbee Alliance will collaborate on producing a Smart home environment which many more devices will be able to connect to. They won’t glitch or fail to function, or require householders to run more than one platform in the home.

The new protocol will be known as Project Connected Home over IP and promises to not only be more universal, but more secure too as there will be no need for poorly compatible devices to be forced into service by work-arounds or hacks. Read more