Living with Nystagmus is tough, it causes uncontrolled movement in the eyes, making it hard to focus and as a result causes poor vision. When I recently moved into a new home, I needed to add a system to monitor my home whilst also taking into consideration my partner who suffers from Nystagmus.

The problem with alarms for people who struggle to see (and when arriving late at night), it’s a challenge to not set them off (waking up the whole neighbourhood). So I set myself a task of finding something that would solve this problem, that wouldn’t cost the earth. After a large amount of time sifting through pages of blogs, forums and user reviews, I came to the conclusion that Samsung SmartThings sounded like the ideal solution.

Now with all tech, I research very thoroughly, we have a mountain of information available to us which can help us come to the right conclusion. The more I read about it, the more excited I became, it was not just a home monitoring system, it also allowed you to control things such as lights and have events trigger automatically. At the cost of £199.99 it ticked all the boxes on what we needed it to do.

So how does it help?

Home security monitoring

Within the starter set you receive a presence sensor, which you can attach to your keyring. This clever bit of kit, allows certain smart responses to trigger when you are within a particular radius. This eliminates the need to key in alarms accurately when entering or leaving your property. The presence sensor is not an essential piece of kit, as you can also connect your smart phone to act in a similar manor.

Your home monitoring can also be activated and deactivated at certain times such as when you go to bed. This means there is no need to get out of bed to stumble down the stairs just to turn on the alarm.

Lighting

Another benefit from SmartThings is the ability to turn lights on and off with the app and set scheduling. So when you arrive home, you can trigger your home automation to turn on a lamp by using the power outlet. This helps when coming through the door in the dark and needing to find the light switch. I’ve also added a LIFX bulb to trigger with movement (via motion sensor) when we walk into the hall, filling the house with light to help find our bearings.

Presence Monitoring

Keeping a track of your partner sounds a bit controlling, but when you worry about the safety of your loved ones. It’s a relief when you get a notification to your phone to let you know they are home and safe (and can start cooking the dinner).

There are more and more products being developed for home automation. Therefore it will become easier for people with Nystagmus to be able to control their home.

If you wish to find out more information about Nystagmus, you can check out the charity Nystagmus Network. You can also follow them on twitter @press_nystagmus.