How it works
Four steps, and only one of them touches the internet. The interesting design decision is what is missing: there is nowhere in this diagram that video is stored.
The architecture
Four steps, and only one of them touches the internet. The interesting design decision is what is missing: there is no place in this diagram where video is stored.
Inside the house
Step 01
Whatever the house already has — CCTV at the gate, a contact on the front door, the smoke alarm in the kitchen, a motion sensor in the hall. Nothing new is mounted, nothing is rewired.
Step 02
A small box beside the recorder reads the streams and the sensor traffic locally, and turns both into short, plain sentences. Frames are discarded as they are read.
Outside
AES-256-GCM
Step 03
Sealed envelopes are posted to Guardian Cloud, which can route them but cannot open them. No video is ever uploaded.
Hoyfo
Medicine delivered at 11:20 am.
Step 04
Your phone holds the keys. The envelope opens on your device and becomes a line you can read in four seconds.
No frame of video crosses the sealed line.
Setup
Step 01
Beside the recorder, on the same network. It finds the cameras and the sensors by itself and shows you a list.
10 minutes
Step 02
Tick the rooms. Set the quiet hours. Everything unticked is never read — this is a filter at the source, not a preference in a settings screen.
15 minutes
Step 03
Each person scans a code. Their phone generates its half of the key pair on device. Nothing sensitive passes through us.
2 minutes each
Step 04
The Hub learns the household's rhythm before it starts calling anything unusual. You will get daily lines from day one and useful judgement from week three.
14 days
A day, end to end
Tuesday at a house in Thrissur, as a family in three cities received it. Four parts of a day, each one a sentence you can read in four seconds.
Morning05:00 — 11:00The kitchen light came on at 6:10.
Ten minutes earlier than usual, which is how you know it is a good day. Tea on the veranda by half past. The gate opened once, for the milk.
Afternoon11:00 — 16:00Medicines came to the door at 11:20.
The chemist's boy, the same one as always. Lunch a little late. The house is quiet between two and four, the way it has been every day this month.
Evening16:00 — 21:00Dad returned home at 6:40.
Back from the walk he has taken since he retired. Two neighbours at the gate for a while. Lights on across the front of the house by seven.
Night21:00 — 05:00The house settled at 10:15.
Doors checked, lights down, nothing moving after quarter past ten. Hoyfo rests until morning. Nothing is read, nothing is recorded, nothing is sent.
Compatibility
Most homes with older parents in them are already instrumented — CCTV at the gate, a contact on the front door, a smoke alarm in the kitchen. Nothing new goes on the wall, and the recorder keeps doing exactly what it does now.
Check your model
Door contacts
Gate and front door, opened and closed
Window sensors
Left open after dark
Smoke & heat
Alarm state, battery, last self-test
Motion (PIR)
Rooms waking and settling
Gas & LPG
Kitchen leak detection
Water leak
Bathroom and utility
Temperature
Heat that an older body shouldn't sit in
Smart plugs
The kettle, the geyser, the fan
No cameras at all? Hoyfo runs on sensors alone. You lose the snapshots and keep everything else.
Ask about your setup