IoT Is Not a Safety System

IoT Devices is not an alarm-monitoring, emergency-response or life-safety system. This article says what that means in practice.

What not to rely on it for

• Protecting life, health or property.
• Detecting or responding to fire, smoke, carbon monoxide, flooding, intrusion or a medical emergency.
• Controlling equipment whose failure could cause injury or death.

Keep independent, approved safety equipment in place, and call your local emergency number in an emergency.

Why

• Notifications, alarms, automations and voice commands depend on device vendors' services, networks and power. They can be delayed, can fail, and can act on out-of-date information.
• A vendor can change or end its service, its limits or its pricing at any time. Affected devices or functions may then stop working or be removed.
• A command whose result cannot be confirmed is shown as Unconfirmed and is never retried automatically. Check the device itself.
• A numeric reading, such as a temperature, is stored at most once every 30 seconds for each reading on a device, unless it crosses a limit that an automation or alarm watches. What you see can be up to that much behind the device.
• If your plan ends or IoT Devices is turned off, alarms and automations stop with it. See IoT Devices and Your Plan.
• Alarms here supplement your approved smoke, carbon monoxide and other safety systems. They never replace them.

Health devices

Remote patient monitoring does not watch readings continuously and is not an emergency service. Readings from health devices are for review by your organization's clinicians. They are not a diagnosis or treatment.

What the platform does to help

• A safety-critical control cannot be used until someone turns it on for that device, with a recorded reason and their password. It can be set to Needs two people, so that a second person confirms every use. Safety-critical controls are never available to SI members, links or voice.
• Security actions can ask for a password, as often as your organization sets, and every one is recorded.
• Every command is written to a record that no one in your organization can edit or delete.

Your responsibility

You decide who in your organization may operate each device, and what you share, automate or expose to voice. Do not give access to anyone who is not entitled to it, and do not use the platform to operate a device in a way that could injure a person or damage property.