Alarm.com has decided to come up with an innovative product for the post-pandemic era with its Touchless Video Doorbell. With this, the visitor at your door step won't need to touch the doorbell to ring at all. Touchless Video Doorbell, with is built in camera detects the visitor standing on the doormat at the front door and chimes to notify the host about the presence of a visitor.
The company claims this Touchless Video Doorbell is a product that aims to reduce public health risks and increase safety. Alarm.com professes it to be the first commercially available video doorbell that functions on absolute no physical contact terms.
This unique doorbell comes with instructions on how to ring the device printed on its front, though that might be quite ambiguous to the user. The company is also offering an additional purchase of their doormat. It will instruct the visitor to stand at the exact place required to be caught on the camera and the ring the doorbell. Earlier Yale's Smart Delivery Box had witnessed incidents of some baffled delivery drivers at their discharge of duties. Experts are foreseeing some similar puzzlement at the practical use of this state-of-the-art contactless doorbell.
Other Features
Alarm.com's newest product works through a series of inputs and outputs of information. When the camera on the doorbell would detect the presence of a visitor via the front door, it will play a chime in the home and send a notification on the host's phone simultaneously. The moment it detects the presence of a visitor it will start recording a video clip of the visitor waiting outside as well. It also allows the host to see and talk to the visitor through its system if there is no necessity for the visitor to enter the premise. Though it remains unclear how such doormat and the Touchless Video Doorbell shall function if the visitor is someone in a wheel chair or any visually impaired unable to read the instructions or with any other physical disability.
This Touchless Video Doorbell comes with some other special features like 1080p HDR camera, and infrared night vision. It can also be integrated with the Alarm.com smart home security system which allows the doorbell to trigger other devices in the home as well when there is a visitor at the door. That way the host can program a light to feature at the detection of the presence of a visitor at the door.
Surface Transmission Risk
In this post-pandemic era, when people are compelled to stay at homes unless it is an absolute emergency, the delivery drivers are the only people whose tireless efforts are making life somewhat simpler for people at homes. This unique device has been said to be designed contactless to benefit them the most by allowing their jobs to be safer. Though the motive behind such invention is admirable its practical utility still remains doubtful.
The US's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unambiguously opines that surface transmission, such as touching your face after touching a virus contaminated surface, is not likely to spread the spread of COVID-19. The most common way of spread of this fatal virus is person to person transmission when they come in close contact. So, it seems that a touchless smart doorbell would not prove to be preventive in such transmission process and would seemingly have no purpose to serve for the same.
This uber-smart Touchless Video Doorbell by Alarm.com is up for grabs for less than $200 at the company's network of installation partners. Though there are ambiguities around its ability to help in the prevention of virus spread, this is surely an unique creation in this new normal era.
