No. Canary Care hubs have their own built-in mobile connection. This means you don’t need Wi-Fi or a landline to get your tech set up and working in the home. Plus, there’s no wires and no need for drilling any holes in the wall.

Even if you’ve got poor signal in your area, Canary Care products will work in over 99.5% of households. We’ll make sure you get a refund if there’s any problems with connectivity once you’re set up.

You should plug in your hub in a central location in the home. This is normally a hallway or landing. Once your hub is plugged in, if it’s still flashing green after 5 minutes – you’ll need to try another location with better signal.

If your hub loses network connection – information from the sensors and visitor cards gets stored. Once connection is back, you’ll get access to this stored information in the Canary Care portal.

If the connection is lost for a significant period – you’ll get an email or SMS to let you know it’s offline.

Your hub has back-up battery power, so if you lose mains power, it’ll keep running and keep sending information to the Canary Care portal.

When fully charged, the backup battery will last about 3 hours. You’ll get an email or SMS to let you know if the power has been off for more than an hour.

If you want to move your hub to a new location, or to a new home – no problem. Simply turn off the power, unplug the hub and plug into the power supply at the new location. It may take a few minutes to re-establish connection – the network light will be solid green once it’s connected. If the green light is still flashing after 5 minutes – the hub won't be able to get connection so you’ll need to try another location.

Don’t forget – you might need to also move your sensors so they are in range of your new hub location.

You can use the sensors in different ways to suit your needs:

Placing them at chest height on a wall in a room means they’ll work as a motion sensor and will monitor light levels and temperature. This means you can keep an eye on activity in a particular room, and if that room is warm enough for example.

Using the sensors with door magnets on a door will monitor when a door is opened and closed. This means you can check if your loved one has left the house, or if visitors are coming in or out.

We’d suggest putting door sensors on front and back doors, and motion sensors in main living spaces, like the kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom.

You can place sensors on fridges, cupboards, windows, and drawers too – essentially anywhere you want to check movement. This means you can monitor if your loved one is eating properly or opening windows when it’s hot.

Sensor batteries should last at least 12 months. Don’t worry – you’ll get an email or SMS when the battery is low, and it needs to be changed.

Canary Care sensors use CR123A Lithium-ion batteries. Batteries are included with all Canary Care system packages. We recommend that you purchase replacement high-power batteries from the Canary Care shop if you need them.

You can buy various packages with 4, 6, or 8 sensors – and you can have up to 10 per system. It all depends on where you want to be tracking movement and how many rooms or doors you’d like to monitor.

A 4-sensor package is ideal for a smaller home where you just need to monitor basic activity – like when someone leaves the house.

Having more sensors means you can monitor more specific activity – like if the fridge is being opened, or windows kept closed. You’ll also get more detailed data with more than 1 sensor per room.

To move your sensor, hold it and gently pull the tab on the contact strip. Do this slowly – it will stretch to about six times its normal length before it comes away completely. Remove the battery and set-up in your new chosen location.

If you’re worried about tampering, you can place door sensors on the ceiling above the doors, facing down and they will still work. This means they are out of reach, and you still get the peace of mind you need.

If a confused loved one unplugs the main hub – no problem, it will run from a backup battery, and you’ll get an alert if power is out for more than an hour.

Visitor cards are great if you need to keep track of who is coming in and out of the home. Visitors swipe their cards on top of the hub so you can see who is in the house.

You can give visitor cards to any care provider or regular visitor and register them all in the Canary Care portal, so you can see who’s who.

You can also get personalised notifications in the Canary Care portal about when visitor cards are used. For example, get an SMS alert when a carer arrives, or doesn’t arrive – so you know if an appointment has happened when it should have.

All our packages come with 1 visitor card, and you can buy as many extra cards as you need.

To register a visit, place the visitor card flat on top of the hub. It beeps to acknowledge the card, and records when it detects the card on the portal.

Give the card to carers or visitors, and ask them to do this when they arrive and when they leave, so you can see their routine and make changes if you need to.

Whilst we currently ship outside of the UK, we recommend contacting our service team before purchasing so we can ensure your Canary Care system will work in your country.