Personal security cameras are already widely available to help us monitor activity at our homes. Most simply record what's happening, and cannot actively flag up any unusual activity. The Netatmo Welcome, however, uses facial recognition to provide alerts about who is in your house.
Netatmo describes itself as an innovation company developing consumer electronics. We've featured the company previously on Gizmag, riding last year's wearable wave with its June UV monitor and prior to that targeting the embryonic hyper-local weather reporting market with a personal weather station.
The Welcome ticks a number of current trend boxes. Most notably, it is part of the growing number of home security video feed devices that last year saw the introduction of the Blacksumac Piper, Sentri and Withings Home. Beyond that, it gives a nod of the head to the always-on, facial recognition and internet-of-things movements.
Netatmo claims that the Welcome is unique in that it recognizes the members of a household using facial recognition technology, and send alerts to a user's mobile device to indicate when a person has been detected, indicating whether or not it recognizes them. It's also able to record video clips of the individuals it detects. The aim of the device is to let users know exactly who is at home and when.
The device allows users to customize the settings for each individual who lives at a household and for those that it doesn't recognize. Users can decide whether or not to receive notifications or store footage about each person. It's possible to set the times between which notifications should be sent, whether or not videos of an individual should be recorded and, if so, whether it should be on their arrival at home or always when they are detected.
Video is captured in 1080p Full HD and the Welcome uses an infrared LED to capture footage at night. A 130-degree lens, meanwhile, gives the device a wide field-of-view and an embedded microphone provides an audio feed. Welcome Tags can also be purchased, that are attached to windows or doors and provide notifications about any movement.
Video footage and identification data is stored locally on an SD card, ensuring privacy from the cloud and avoiding the need for cloud storage costs. Netatmo also says that access to the camera from a user's smartphone is secured by "a bank-level encrypted connection." According to Netatmo, the Welcome takes a matter of minutes to set up and connects to the internet either via ethernet or Wi-Fi.
The Welcome app is available on Windows, Mac, Android or iOS. Its dashboard shows who is at home and displays a live video feed. A timeline screen provides a list of previous activity.
Pricing information for the Netatmo Welcome has not yet been released, but the device is expected to be available from the second quarter of this year.
The video below provides an introduction to the Netatmo Welcome.
Source: Netatmo
