More on the technology

The hub is the digital 'brains' of the Safe & Secure system. It connects to all your home monitoring devices and to the internet. This means you can see real-time information about your home on your dashboard.

You can control and monitor your Safe & Secure system using an online dashboard. You can use this on the internet from any web-enabled computer or on a smartphone app on your iPhone. Use the dashboard to arm your intruder alarms and save your personal Safe & Secure settings.

See more of the dashboard

When you plug in your hub, it seamlessly connects to all your other Safe & Secure devices and sensors. It creates a wireless home area network, where the hub can communicate with your motion sensors, SmartPlugs, key fobs and so on.

It works in the same area of the wireless spectrum as technologies like WiFi and Bluetooth, and is optimised to work with these without interference.

The signal range is similar to that of WiFi. To extend the range, you'd need to strategically place an extra signal booster in your home. You could use a SmartPlug for this.

The Safe & Secure system runs on the ZigBee wireless network, which is a mesh-based system (meaning it relays data). We use the 2.4GHz standard protocol, 805.15.4. It's a low power, low information network, and so our devices have a much longer battery life than if they worked on WiFi.

It's also a self-healing network, making it more robust and more flexible in finding the best route as conditions change around your home for example when you open and close doors or you add new devices.

Your Safe & Secure system features GPRS mobile internet capability, and your hub contains a data only SIM card for this purpose locked to the device. If your home has a power cut or your broadband fails, the system will automatically switch to GPRS (in a power cut the hub will also use an inbuilt battery back-up). It means your home security is always on. If your system needs to switch to GPRS or your house has a power cut, it will tell you, and you can relax knowing that your home's still protected.

The system uses very little power. All the devices go into a deep sleep when they're not in use, saving energy until they're 'woken'. While asleep, they use about 1 micro-amp (that's one millionth of an amp) of energy, which means a tiny battery can last over a year. To put it in perspective, if 300,000 households had one Safe & Secure device, it would use the same amount of energy as one light bulb.

We use the highest security standards to protect your privacy and keep details about your home completely safe. Your hub is protected by full use of public and private keys and certificates, and your details are always encrypted. We use AES128 bit encryption on our radios, and SSL encryption when sending information over the internet. Also, all of your system data is backed up in what used to be a nuclear bunker.