There’s been an explosion of home security cameras in the past few years, but whether they are attached to some kind of monitoring service or rely on their own apps, they are less convenient to install than they could be. While many of them happily hop on to a Wi-Fi network, they can’t stray too far from an outlet.
Butterfleye combines a wide-angle lens with a big battery to keep it going up to a week without charging. It employs sophisticated sensors that go beyond simple motion detection to include sound detection; it can also differentiate between humans and pets. The company claims it has more improvements in the queue in terms of accurate identification that it plans to deliver via regular firmware updates. Going along with the prevailing model these days, the company offers some limited cloud storage of video the Butterfleye captures with more available for a monthly fee.
Since its initial campaign last year, the San Francisco-based company has toned down the non-security selfie applications of the camera and instead is going head to head on staying in charge of your home without needing a charge for up to a week. The company seeks to raise $100,000 by August 25th in a Flexible Funding campaign to help out with the tooling process. It’s offering a number of limited tiers, with the baseline being $199 for a single unit.
The Butterfleye is ideal for situations that require surveillance stints of a few days, particularly outdoors (as in camping trips). The company claims its low-light performance exceeds that of the iPhone 6 and has plans to improve nighttime video capture further.
Netgear also offers a wireless camera system that claims long battery life with the Arlo system, previously known as the Avaak Vue. Like the Arlo, the Butterfleye uses a magnetic mount that allows a fair degree angle range. Due to the Butterfleye’s heavier size. it has to be mounted with something more than the Arlo mount’s light adhesive. However, one reason the Arlo cameras are so small is that they use a proprietary wireless communication method. That requires a base station that must be plugged in at all times (and potentially an extender).