Piper Home Security Cam for Smartphones

[Hum]

The Piper home security/home automation camera. It was a huge Indiegogo success story, and now it?s a shipping product?$240.

Piper is a white or black plastic video camera that you can perch on a shelf somewhere or mount on a wall or ceiling. Then you can monitor what it?s seeing on your phone, wherever you happen to be in the world.

The Piper?s standout feature is its 180-degree lens. It sees the entire room, even directly to its right and left, above it and below it.

Using your fingers on your iPhone or Android phone, you can flatten out the scene by zooming in, up to 10X. And you can scroll all around, as though it were a virtual reality camera.

With one tap, you can also break up the phone?s screen into four panes, each of which you can zoom and scroll independently. The result looks convincingly like you have four cameras aimed at different parts of the room.

Piper will tell you if there?s something going on in your house, and it?s  easy to build ?rules? that control how you get notified. For example, you can build a rule that says, ?When I?m away, if you see something moving, notify me by calling me?and record video for 25 seconds.? Or: ?When I?m home, if you hear a loud noise, text me.?

The Piper also has temperature, sound, and brightness sensors. So another rule might be: ?When I?m on vacation, if the temperature drops too much, notify the list of neighbors I?ve entered in Settings.?

There?s the killer feature: compatibility with Z-Wave gadgets. Z-Wave is a standard for home-automation accessories: sensors, alarms, thermostats, locks, motorized window shades, remote-controlled light switches, and so on.

One of them, for example, plugs into a wall outlet?and then anything you plug into it becomes remote-controllable. A TV, a stereo, a ceiling fan, a lamp, an air conditioner?you can turn any of that on or off from your phone, anywhere in the world. Or you can set up a rule that turns them on or off on a schedule. Or set them up to be triggered by motion, sound, or temperature spikes in the house.

Another Z-Wave accessory is a window or door sensor. When the window or door is opened or closed, the Piper can notify you. Or you can set up a rule that says, ?When this door is opened, sound an alarm that?s loud enough to be heard from space.?

? Similarly, you can?t trigger the siren on command, which might be fun if you happen to spot a burglar, or if you have an oversleeping teenager. The siren is another feature that only rules can trigger. (The company says that feature is coming next month, however.)

? The Piper has a microphone and a speaker, but you can?t yet use it like an intercom from wherever you are. It could be a lot of fun to play with a burglar?s mind by making ghost noises, shouting ?I see you, creep!? or announcing that the house will self-destruct in 15 seconds. :huh:

This feature is in testing, but not yet shipping with the product.

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