Fancy thermostat maker, Nest, has launched its smart camera in the UK. Priced at £159, the Nest Cam lets you monitor your home from afar using a smartphone app.
Google-owned Nest spent more than half a billion dollars acquiring Dropcam last year, and the Nest Cam certainly bears the design hallmarks of its forebears. It has a magnetic base, which means it can be attached to a number of surfaces around the home, but it can also be wall mounted or left free standing.
The camera has a 130-degree field of view and also has a night-vision mode, so the lights don't need to be on to spot a burglar creeping across your living room. Video is captured in Full HD at 30 fps, and the Nest Cam supports dual-band 802.11bgn Wi-Fi to stream that footage across your home network.
The camera offers motion and sound detection, with the accompanying smartphone app alerting you if it detects something amiss. Nest claims the camera is capable of distinguishing between background noise (such as passing traffic) and significant noise, such as an intruder crashing through the back door.
The Nest Cam isn't only useful for remote monitoring, it can also be used to keep in touch with people (or even pets) at home thanks to its built-in microphone and speaker. You can pre-programme spoken commands, and then tap a button in the smartphone app to tell the dog to "get down" or "be quiet".
The camera can also work in conjunction with Nest's other smart home products. Switch the Nest Thermostat to "away", for example, and the Nest Cam will automatically start recording and monitoring for intruders in the home. Likewise, recording will kick in if the Nest Protect smoke alarm detects a fire.
Nest sells an £8 per month subscription package with the camera that lets you store up to a month's worth of footage in the cloud, or create timelapse videos from past recordings.
The Nest Cam is on sale now from the Nest website.
