Netatmo’s Home Security Camera Welcome Snaps Photos of Every Face
LAS VEGAS—Typical smart home security cameras take video of your home 24/7 on a subscription plan for a set number of days. Netatmo, however, is taking a different approach. Rather than continuous video capture, its Welcome camera takes photos when it detects a face in the room, and then sends a push notification to your smartphone.
Unlike subscription-based security cameras, photos taken by the Welcome are stored locally on an SD card, rather than in the cloud. When you run out of space, simply remove the SD card, remove the stored photos and pop it back into Welcome to keep monitoring your home.
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Welcome is strictly face-based: While it won’t be able to tell you if a rock came flying through your living room window while you’re at work, it will be able to tell you if someone entered through the broken window after that by detecting the intruders face.
Fitting in the palm of your hand, the Netatmo Welcome is sleek and discreet enough to fit anywhere you want. It looks much like the company's Weather Station: it’s a smooth cylindrical tube than you could easily hide in a bookcase or in between the leaves of a potted plants. It has a 130-degree field of view, so you’ll be able to see nearly all of an entire room, and it takes photos in sharp 1080-pixel resolution.
There’s no initial setup process to log your face or the faces of your family members in Welcome. Simply place Welcome where you want it, and immediately the device beings snapping face photos. Each new face will be set to your smartphone as a notification, and you can log them through the app. You can also choose to turn off push notifications for certain family members, so if you don’t want to be notified when your kids are in the living room, you don’t have to be.
If you’re only concerned with the people that come and go, welcomed or not, in your home, Netatmo’s Welcome camera could be an affordable option. The company hasn’t released the Welcome’s price yet, but it will be available by Q2 of 2015.
Valentina Palladino is a senior writer for Tom's Guide. Follow her at @valentinalucia. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide and on Facebook.
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