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Connected Objects Imaging

Koova2 guards your home or business with canister-like vigilance

The purveyors of connected smart home objects are convinced that smart home robots are the next big thing. For years now, they’ve infiltrated and surveilled — and in some cases, charmed — homeowners into adding their capabilities to the home. Amaryllo International’s Koova 2 is the sequel to the original while updating it with a few key additions.

This new Koova2 doesn’t stray too far from the original’s small, portable form factor — going as far as still claiming it to be the world’s smallest. It packs a 240° viewing range with auto-tracking capabilities augmented with facial recognition and motion sensors for security purposes, along with a wide array of notifications and alerts to keep users in the know about their abode at all times. Now, two-way audio is added to interact with family and friends or scare off would-be burglars, while activity/block zones let user mark areas to receive/not receive alerts for. Koova2 also offers cloud storage for the video it continuously records, offering users 10-second video notifications and three-second video alerts that are all archived for review anytime.

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Imaging Smart Home

Patrolling your home is how the Orbii security camera rolls

The appeal of home security solutions stems from always being connected, allowing a user to always know what’s happening back at home. Most of these systems use video cameras to supplement alerts and other notifications with smart recognition technology to detect the source of a disturbance, for instance. Depending on the size of the home, this can require purchasing many cameras, making what should be economical systems far more expensive.

Orbii solves this little problem. Its spherical design lets it move by shifting its internal center of gravity, like a hamster in a hamster ball. Inside, a central sphere contains omni-directional drive motors that shift the sphere in any direction with control and agility, letting it freely roam (and map the environment over time) or be controlled by smartphone or tablet app. This makes it easy for users to take advantage of its 720p HD camera to get a clear picture whether it’s day or night due to built-in night vision, with eight hours of onboard storage or 30 days of cloud storage available for footage.

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Imaging Smart Home

Spot is a low-cost, feature-rich camera for the connected home

Home security cameras have a bit of a reputation of lacking the kinds of features worthy of the excessive prices they’ve demanded. Seeing an opportunity, there have been a rash of companies looking to make better money by advertising a better product. iSmartAlarm is hoping their version of a lower cost yet versatile smart home camera will strike a chord with consumers looking for a better value.

Spot has all the expected features for a product in this category: HD-resolution video, night vision, sound and motion detection, push notifications, and both cloud and local storage supporting up to a 64GB micro SD card. The company tries to set its product apart in two ways.