*The following features gifted products. All opinions are my own*

 

Why We Need Security

We moved home earlier in the year. It was a fantastic experience – well-planned and well-executed thanks to mine and Hollie’s experience at this kind of thing. We’ve done this so many times before and I’ve done a lot years of copywriting for a moving company, so we made sure the actual event was a swift one.

There were certain things that we had to do with the place that we haven’t had to do before. For instance, it was our first time buying and fitting carpet. We also had to sort out outdoor storage, so had to go about sorting out a shed. One thing that we considered but haven’t made any firm plans to sort is security – which is where our new additions come in.

The boys are very protective of what’s theirs. As they are 4 and 5 now, we know that their closeness in age means that they are very much into similar things and feel as though they have to stand guard over their favourite things to ensure no one (the other brother) plays with, moves or even touches them.

Thankfully, I found the ideal solutions for the both of them to make sure they know when anyone’s messing with their goods: Spybots. We got the T.R.I.P. SpyBot and the SpyBots Room Guardian to upgrade our home security instantly.

 

Set Up

The set up for the SpyBots toys is extremely simple. Before you hand them over to the kids to get to work with, all you have to do is put batteries in and familiarise yourself with the overall mechanics of it.

With the actual SpyBot, just one round of getting caught by the sensor is all you need. It’s motion-activated, so it’s completely intuitive.

For the Room Guardian you’ll need to figure out how to set up the access code but that’s about it. Once you’re there, let the kids do their thing. All you need to know is that if you make the wrong move, there will be a lot of noise and flashing lights.

 

Play

When it came to playtime, we decided that the best introductory use case for the boys to attempt to retrieve sweets from their new friend Helpful Monkey. Usually Helpful Monkey’s role is to keep the keys safe, but this time he was tasked with looking after the sweets. He had the backup of the T.R.I.P. SpyBot to watch out for any intruders. We just sat back and watched as the boys tried every sneaky maneuver they could think of to get their hands on their goods and avoid the LED Tripwire alarm.

As for the Room Guardian, the boys found it far more entertaining to keep getting the access code wrong than to play along properly, so we ended up in the noisiest house you can imagine thanks to their new little security systems. Over time I can see how they might find it more helpful when it comes to hiding particular toys of theirs in the cupboards and secret hiding places in their room, so we’ll just have to see how it all pans out.

Hollie and I have already come up with a host of ideas for what we’re going to use it on next:

• Watching out for the fraggles trying to get to the sweets drawer
• Catching them leaving their room before the GroClock turns yellow
• Add technology to an otherwise simple game of hide and seek

As for their own potential uses, we’re going to allow them to get completely creative with it.

 

Summary

Listen, I’m a busy guy. In many cases I like the idea that robots are taking up roles that humans once had to do. Every day of the week my boys will ask me or Hollie to “make sure Cameo/Marlo doesn’t touch X”. Now we finally have the means to outsource it to a robotic assistant.

Find the Spybots Spybot here at Smyths. Find the Spybots Room Guardian here at Smyths.