en 
Source: iStock.com/gorodenkoff
Greater flexibility for the smart home – update for the Gigaset elements app
8. December 2021 Published by Jana GreylingIn Germany, smart home solutions are popular and widely used. According to a survey commissioned by Germany’s digital association Bitkom, more and more people are becoming attracted to the prospect of living in a fully connected home in the future. Among the most frequent reasons given for using smart home solutions are convenience, security and energy efficiency. A lot of people find the stronger feeling of security reassuring. For example, being able to use a smart home app to make sure everything at home is in order even after you have left the house, and being able to check up again at regular intervals during the course of the day. Gigaset is one of the pioneers of smart home technology in Germany, launching its first smart home portfolio as far back as 2013. The central control component in the Gigaset portfolio is also an app, which has been extensively updated and now has a range of new and exciting features.
The Gigaset elements app is the control center for the Gigaset Smart Home system. You can use the Gigaset elements app to monitor the windows and doors you have fitted with sensors, view a live stream from your indoor or outdoor camera, and customize a range of other features.
For example, you can choose between four different alarm modes: “Außer Haus” (Out of House), when no one is at home, “Zuhause” (At Home), to disarm the entire system, “Individuell” (Individual), to monitor a single story, for example, and “Nacht” (Night), to allow an alarm to be triggered by all selected window and door sensors, but not by the home’s motion sensors. If an alarm is triggered, you will be informed immediately via push message or e-mail. Alarm sirens can also be activated and lights in the house switched on. All events (such as motions or alarms) detected by the sensors are displayed in your app’s event list.
New dashboard format
Until now, the elements app had a fixed structure of tiles displaying different items of data, enabling users to see at a glance whether everything is in order at home, which windows are tilted, when an occupant last came home or where the cameras are currently pointing.
The new software release for the elements app enables you to arrange your dashboard to suit your individual taste and requirements. You can now decide which tiles you want to monitor at any given time, adding them to the dashboard using drag and drop.
Filtering camera streams
Gigaset launched the Smart Camera 2.0 in December 2020 as a successor to Gigaset Smart Camera, first introduced in 2017. If you have been using Gigaset smart home solutions in your home for quite some time, and have upgraded to the new Smart Camera 2.0, you now also have the option of defining areas of your home where movements remain undetected and are therefore not recorded.
Smart Home: Multisystem feature
One of the most important innovations in the elements app is the multisystem feature, enabling you to merge two of the smart home systems connected to the elements app. For example, if you have a holiday home in one profile and your main home in a different profile, you can combine them both in one account.
If you choose to do so, please note that your original “Ferienhaus” (Holiday House) account will no longer exist separately. This means the feature should only be used when both homes are to be monitored by one user.
Activating the new feature in the elements app is really simple:
- Log on to your main account “Ihr Zuhause” (Your Home)
- Choose “Mein Zuhause” (My Home) from the menu.
- Click “Neu Erstellung” (Create)
- You can now choose between “Neu erstellen” (New) to set up a completely new system or “Von anderem Konto zusammenführen” (Merge from other account) to add an existing system to your account.
- Once you have completed the last step, both homes are now part of your “Privathaus” (Private House) account and you can see all the sensors.
- To switch around between apartments/houses, click on “Mein Zuhause” (My Home) at the bottom of the menu overview and select the desired property.
Once the accounts have been merged, the camera service packages are also listed in a single view. If each account has its own package, you can transfer the lower one to the following month. If you want to switch accounts (during a vacation, for example), all smartwatches and widgets are automatically switched to the chosen account. These new features in the elements app allow you to control your smart home with even greater convenience and flexibility.
Comments
