How to Secure Your Home with Auto-Arm... While Avoiding 'Alert Overload'

Nobody likes a never-ending "ping" of phone notifications — especially when you're busy at work, running errands, or spending quality time with family and friends.

A downfall of some home security systems is an excess of notifications, alerting you to "unusual activity" that is, in reality, anything but.

At best, these "false alarms" can be annoying, interrupting the flow of your day or distracting you from the task at hand. At worst, they can be anxiety-inducing — you might worry when you receive a "movement detected" alert on your phone, even if it turns out to be benign.

Your home security system shouldn't alert you to normal, expected events. Here at Hedge, we've developed a solution to prevent this from happening. Read on to learn the ins and outs of our "auto-arm" feature.

Arming & disarming your home with Hedge 

Arming and disarming your home controls the notifications your Hedge devices send to your Hedge App.

You'll receive certain notifications — like water detector and smoke/CO alerts — regardless of whether your home is armed or disarmed. However, you'll only receive the below alerts when your home is armed:

• Motion and noise detected by your SmartCam

• Motion detected by your Motion Sensors

• Monitored doors and windows opening and closing detected by your Contact Sensors

• Garage door opening, closing, or being left open when your home is armed, for example when you leave home or if you’ve set up Auto-Scheduling to arm your home before bed.

These are the alerts that, without auto-arm, have the potential to be "false alarms" — alerts that can be caused by something as benign and expected as these scenarios:

• Your pet walking into a security camera-manned room while you're gardening in the backyard

• Your teenager arriving home from school while you're out running errands

• Your spouse closing the garage door behind them as you work in your home office

Sure, you can disable notifications or even the home security devices themselves — but then you run the risk of forgetting to turn them back on, rendering them useless in the event that you actually need them.

The solution? Hedge auto-arm.

What is auto-arm and how does it work?

Auto-arm is a feature that you can easily enable on your Hedge App. When you set up auto-arm, you'll only receive notifications when you or other added users (like your spouse or children) aren't home.

Auto-arm is made possible by geo-fencing technology that allows you to set a virtual perimeter around your home.

When the last Hedge user leaves that perimeter, your home is auto-armed. When the first Hedge user re-enters that perimeter, your home is auto-disarmed.

Does your spouse leave for work later than you do? Your home won't be auto-armed until they leave. Do your children arrive home from school earlier than you do? Your home will auto-disarm when they arrive home.

Adjusting and customizing the auto-arm radius

Another great auto-arm feature? You can easily adjust the auto-arm perimeter around your home, setting the geo-fence radius to "small," "medium," or "large." You can also set a customized radius.

Say, for example, you live on a lot of land and frequently take walks along your property's perimeter. You can set your auto-arm radius to encompass the entirety of your acreage, so your home won't auto-arm/disarm every time you go out for a walk.

Or, say you're close with your neighbors, and often swing by their homes for a quick chat. You can set your auto-arm radius to encompass your block, preventing your home from auto-arming/disarming every time you leave the house to socialize.

Customizing the auto-arm radius is easy — just follow these instructions.