Automation
Family Check-Ins
Pre-register household members at install. When your kids come home from school, Halstead recognizes them and sends a 'Sarah is home, 3:47pm' notification — without triggering a scary alarm.
What it is
Family check-ins use Halstead's AI to recognize pre-registered household members and send positive arrival notifications instead of alarm-style intrusion alerts. The feature is designed for households with kids who come home from school, teens with after-school schedules, or family members on shift work.
How it works
Step by step.
Pre-register family members
During or after installation, add household members to your account with reference photos. Halstead's AI uses the photos to learn each person's appearance for recognition. Reference photos are processed once and discarded — only the trained model parameters are stored.
Family member arrives at home
The doorbell or entry camera detects motion. AI motion classification identifies a person. Family recognition kicks in to identify which family member is arriving.
Positive notification fires
Instead of a generic 'Person detected at front door' alarm-style notification, you get a positive 'Sarah is home, 3:47pm' message with a snapshot. No alarm sound, no escalation.
Unknown people still trigger alerts
If the AI doesn't recognize the person, normal motion alerts continue. You get notified about strangers, delivery drivers, and unfamiliar visitors as expected.
Why it matters
Most security systems treat every arrival the same way: a stranger and your own daughter both get the 'PERSON DETECTED' alarm-style alert. That's annoying and conditions you to ignore your security alerts. Family check-ins distinguish family from non-family at the AI level so your alerts mean what they should mean: family arrivals are positive notifications, strangers are alarm-style alerts.
Common questions
What about privacy for my kids?+
Family member reference photos are used to train the recognition model and then discarded. Only model parameters (effectively a mathematical fingerprint) are retained. The video itself follows your normal Halstead retention settings — typically 7, 30, or 60 days depending on your tier.
How accurate is the recognition?+
For registered household members in normal lighting, recognition typically achieves 95%+ accuracy. Lower accuracy in low light, with sunglasses, or unusual angles. The system errs on the side of treating ambiguous cases as 'person' rather than 'recognized family member', so you get an alert rather than missing a real intruder.
Can I add temporary recognition for visitors?+
Yes — for visitors expected to come and go for an extended period (a college kid home for the summer, a long-term houseguest), you can add them to the family list and remove them later. For shorter-term visitors, use Visitor Passes instead.
Does family check-in work with Halstead Watch?+
Yes. Halstead Watch (the optional neighbor network feature) uses the same AI infrastructure but never shares family member identity with neighbors — only blurred motion events.