This Gadget Lets You See Who’s Home from Your Smartphone
At last year’s CES, Netatmo proved that they were creating gadgets meant to look out for us. Their June wearable detects UV rays so you can sunscreen yourself accordingly and their Weather Station dock keeps the air in your home healthy. While making the rounds at CES this year, we saw that Netatmo is yet again bringing more innovation for the good of humanity with a camera that knows who is home.
Welcome isn’t what you probably think of when you think of home surveillance and that’s because it’s something totally new. Using facial recognition technology, this little camera can detect your family members, notifying you of who’s home… even in the dark. But this isn’t like some creepy CSI thing; we promise.
You’ll start using Welcome by snapping photos of the people you want it to recognize. Then, when those people walk through the front door,Welcome sees them and sends you a notification on your smartphone. It gets smarter the more it sees their faces. Perhaps even more important, it alerts you if an unknown face enters the house so that you can potentially protect your family from a break in. Right from the app, you can see who’s currently home and access the live stream even if you’re stuck at work late or traveling.
Where do all of these HD images and videos of your family go? Nowhere. While most tech is moving to the cloud, Welcome data is not and there is a good reason. As we all know (especially the famous faces who were victim to the latest iCloud hack), the cloud can be breached. That’s why Welcome houses all of your data on an SD card in the camera, which is only accessible to you.
And you don’t need a computer science degree to hook this thing up. Just plug it in, download the app and you’re ready to go. You can expect this neat little camera to hit the market later this year. Make sure to sign up for updates on launch dates and pricing.
Would you buy a Welcome for your home? Let us know in the comments!