I’m a big fan of Almonds. They’re near the top of my preferred nut list But these almonds, while interesting, are less tasty. We’re talking here about Securifi’s Almond routers, and the company wants to change the game around both home security and home connectivity with them.
First a little about Securifi, the company has been a player in both the Wi-Fi and home security space since 2012. In an increasingly busy space (or, more correctly, two busy spaces), Securifi is trying to merge two distinct problem areas.
And so it is with the Securifi Almond router. Almonds are smart routers with touch screens that offer a pretty simple set-up process as well as serving as a hub for smart home devices. Since debuting in 2012, Securifi has an average rating of 4.2 on Amazon from over 15k reviews and have consistently been one of the top 20 bestselling routers. Since 2012, they have shipped over 300k Almonds. That’s a whole lot of nuts.
A nutty mesh
Securifi is today announcing its latest product, the Almond Guard. This new hub is a mesh network capable router that can act as a hub for different smart home devices. Perhaps more interesting, it can also act as a home security hub and in doing so, Securifi hopes it will make a dent on the old world home monitoring services such as ADT.
The hub itself can communicate wirelessly with various sensors around houses, and Securifi is integrating it into an end-to-end monitoring service for an ongoing $10 per month fee – far less than traditional monitoring offerings.
What does Almond Guard do?
Almond Guard is a broad communication device – it utilizes multiple signals such as Wi-Fi, GPS, ZigBee and cellular from residents’ devices to arm and disarm homes at appropriate times. It does this by integrating home security, smart home, Wi-Fi Mesh and Cyber Security capabilities into a single system. They’re looking to essentially integrate the sort of services from companies such as ADT, Eero, Smartthings – but all from a single unit.
From a home security standpoint, Almond Guard works wirelessly with sensors placed around users’ homes to detect burglars and other unusual activity. The free smartphone app allows the user to monitor their home remotely. It’s slightly Big Brother” but via the integration with Wi-Fi, Almond Guard can detect authorized smartphones entering and leaving the house. It will automatically arm the house if it detects no one is home and will disarm the house when any family member returns home.
The smart home features
The smart home hub capability allows the user to control devices such as lights, thermostats and smart plugs from their smartphone. It also works with the smart device du jour, Alexa. Homeowners can also set smart home rules to suit their lifestyle – for example, if the family is on vacation, they can set the system to turn on the lights intermittently so it looks like people are home.
From a connectivity distribution perspective, Almond’s mesh Wi-Fi capability means that homeowners can create a Wi-Fi network that covers their entire house. Finally Almond has a security layer, meaning that it can provide digital protection against hacks and ransomware across the entire smart home deployment.
MyPOV
Security and the smart home are two sides of the same coin. While coins have only two sides, I’m going to stretch this metaphor to suggest that the third side is broad house-wide wireless connectivity. Almond is ticking all of these boxes and the result is a nice, cohesive fabric that covers off most of the use cases homeowners have. Of course, people will worry about the “Big brother” aspects of a device that can sense the external connections of all the devices that come within the house boundaries – but that is more of a perception thing than an actual one.
Almond Guard looks like a really useful addition to the smart home world.
