A new company that's backed by Android co-founder Andy Rubin's Playground accelerator is hoping to find its way into your home this year.
The company, called Lighthouse, unveiled on Thursday (May 11) a new home security camera that uses artificial intelligence, 3D sensing, and other technologies to take home monitoring to another level. For instance, it can identify dogs and children, and provide relevant information about each, including whether the dog has been walked today and when the kids actually got home.
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According to The Verge, which earlier reported on the Lighthouse after demoing the camera, this is how it works. When it first turns on, Lighthouse identifies each person. You can then tag that person and say it's a relative or even you. From then on, the camera will know it's someone who should be in your home and not alert you to a possible intruder.
The new Lighthouse smart camera is available now for pre-order. For $399, you can get the device and one free year of service (it'll cost $10 per month after that). Paying $499 gets you the device and three years of service, and $599 will get you five years of service. The Lighthouse will start shipping in September.
Along the way, Lighthouse is continually monitoring the home and will only alert you to trouble when it perceives a threat. Lighthouse says on its website that the feature will cut down on "unwanted alerts." The camera also comes with an onboard siren and speaker, so you can sound an alarm when there's an intruder and speak to the person in your house.
In the companion app running on iOS and Android, a place where you can view your home in real time, you can also call the police.
The artificial intelligence component is one of the more compelling Lighthouse features. According to the site, you can ask Lighthouse what the kids did while you were out to the store yesterday, and it will return results so you can check it out from within the app. In other examples, Lighthouse envisions you asking what the cat was up to while you were gone and finding out if the kids are running in the house.
The app can even be asked sophisticated questions like, "Did you see Chris with the dog at the front door last week while I was away?"
The camera's alerting features are called pings and will alert you when something important happens. You can decide whether you want to be alerted when the kids come home, if no one enters the kitchen, and more. The camera also keeps a log so you can see what's happened throughout the day.
The camera itself is a thin and white cylindrical device that comes with a 1080p camera and 3D sensor. It also supports night vision and is continually learning, so it can determine what's out of place each day.
