Aico has announced the third iteration of its HomeLINK App for Residents, designed to tackle some of the housing sector’s biggest challenges, such as damp, mould and poor indoor air quality, allowing residents to take the first steps to create and improve their home’s safety and health.
The app is a complementary addition to Aico’s HomeLINK IoT platform, which includes a network of fire and carbon monoxide alarms, environmental sensors and the Ei1000G Gateway that connects them all. The app is designed to provide residents with detailed information about the health and safety of their home and provides users with hints, tips and recommendations to better their home’s indoor environmental conditions, which in turn will improve their own health and wellbeing.
With improvements to its core features, the new iteration of the app will send users notification and recommendations detailing how to reduce the risk of allergens, mould and indoor air pollution as well as fire alarm testing reminders. Through real-time information, residents will see a breakdown of carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity conditions within each room, followed by educational information to understand their home better.
One new feature focuses on resident care, giving users the ability to invite others to the app, so that family members, carers or friends can also access the information to support the resident in following the healthy home recommendations.
Ongoing research and development and innovation is taking place to help further improve the HomeLINK App for Residents. Taking this to the next level, residents can now trial new, experimental features via the app such as different design elements, allowing HomeLINK to directly collect feedback and quickly implement better user experiences.
“One of the things we noticed early on was how the tiniest thing could affect the moods, perceptions and overall mental health of the resident when using the app,” said Amrita Poptani, product manager at HomeLINK. “With this in mind, we ensured elements of the new user experience were fun, exciting and light without taking away from the seriousness of the information. And while it’s always a work in progress, this new version not only lays the foundations perfectly, but it’s also ‘very snazzy’, as one of our resident-testers put it!”
To date, Aico has brought its HomeLINK connected, smart home solution to over 22,000 socially rented homes in the UK with this number rapidly increasing. Over 136,000 devices have been installed, encompassing a gateway for each property with a set of connected alarms and environmental sensors.