Living with O2 Home View

Living with O2 Home View – one month on #O2Home

You may recall that we recently had the O2 Home View package installed to give us added peace of mind with Daddy P working long hours. My first post described the initial set up and our reasons for choosing this service.

Living with O2 Home View

The O2 Home View package provides us with a PIR and wide angled camera for our living room, a door contact which was placed on our front door and another camera which picks up any movement on our stairs and landing.

Living with O2 Home View, one month on, has seen us setting Daddy P up with his own user profile and both of us downloading the free O2 Home app.

I am the main user on our account, but I have the flexibility to create 10 other user profiles.  It’s also possible to give these additional users different levels of access.  Daddy P has a full access profile, so he can see, create and amend programmes.  By setting up custom profiles you can restrict access, allowing users to only add or delete programmes or create additional user accounts for example.

For the time being we’re happy to just have Daddy P and I set up on our plan, but there may be instances in the future where it might be handy for remote family members to have access too.

The O2 Home dashboard is really easy to use on the laptop, and I’ve found it just as easy to navigate on my mobile too.  Both offer the same functionality.  We can see live snapshots from both installed cameras.

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As well as seeing a full run down of our activity log, showing any movements detected.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, Daddy P works very long hours. I’ve set up programmes to detect any movement from the living room PIR and front door sensor from my normal bedtime til my son and I get up in the morning.  If any movement is detected, Daddy P gets a text alerting him of the issue.  As his comings and goings are so irregular this does mean that so far (thankfully) it’s been him triggering the O2 Home View system.  But this also gives us both peace of mind that the system is working well. He’s managed to avoid actually being caught on camera as yet, but we have seen that the night vision on the camera works well.

I’ve also set up programmes to alert me if anything happens whilst I’m on the school run, morning and afternoon.  You can see in the photo above that the system was triggered on Monday of this week at 8.51. I’d activated the system as I opened our front door.  As well as the activity being logged on our system, I have this programme set up to send me an alert via text.

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In fact, I can now see that I need to tweak this programme slightly to have an earlier end time.  This is so easy, and again can be done via the laptop or app.

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Select the relevant programme you want to change and select edit.  Then change the relevant fields and save, so easy and takes literally seconds to do.

In fact, I can now see that I need to tweak this programme slightly to have an earlier end time.   This is so easy, and again can be done via the laptop or app.  Select the relevant programme you want to change and select edit.  Then change the relevant fields and save, so easy and takes literally seconds to do.

During the half term holidays I didn’t need the morning and afternoon school run programmes to work as we were more likely to be at home (certainly in the mornings!).  So rather than having to delete the programmes, you just pause them.  Then on Monday morning I reactivated them again.  Easy.

Setting up a programme is simple.  My only niggle with it is that you can’t copy programmes.  For instance my school run programme.  I set the morning programme to text me and take video if the front door was opened or motion was detected in the living room or landing.  The programme is set to run every week day morning between set times. It would be great if I could have copied and edited this programme, as the only thing I wanted to change was the timings for the afternoon.  That functionality isn’t currently available.  Hopefully that might be a mod for the future.

We were going to be away for 4 days to celebrate Daddy P’s 50th birthday last month. Normally we’d ask our neighbours and my SIL to keep an eye on the house for us. Neighbours were going to be away and my BIL has been very ill recently, so it was such a relief to be able to rely on our O2 Home View package instead.

I created a programme which would send me a text if there was any movement detected within the house for the duration of our holiday. Daddy P liked the fact that he could also go into his O2 Home app to see live feed from our cameras, for added peace of mind.

Having access to the app, also means that I can amend programmes on the go.  Over half term our normal routine went out the window and my son and I went off for a few adventures.  This of course meant I wasn’t at home much.  No problem. I just logged in via my phone and created new programmes and amended others as I went.  Daddy P could also continue to check in via his phone, he really does love this aspect of the package.

It’s been so reassuring to know that we could be away from home and still make sure our house was secure.  That we would receive a text and/or email alerting of us of any issues and showing video footage if programmed has been great to know. For me, being able to go to sleep at night and know that Daddy P will be alerted instantly if any movements were detected before he’d get home.

All in all we’ve been really pleased with living with O2 Home View, one month on and will enjoy its benefits in the months to come.

To find out more about the O2 Home View package as well as the Comfort and Connect packages, pop over to the O2 Home website.

disclosure:  we have been given the O2 Home View package for a 12 month period in exchange for our thoughts over this last month.  My comments will always remain my own honest opinions.

 

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