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Best smart baby monitors in 2024
Feature-packed smart baby monitors provide confidence that your child is having a good night's sleep
A good night's sleep for your baby is a priority for every parent. Knowing you can keep an eye on your little one's sweet dreams from wherever you are, thanks to a smart baby monitor, is the ultimate peace of mind.
Wyze launches $60/year home monitoring service with proactive 911 dispatch
The package includes a network hub, door keypad, and motion sensors
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If there's a speedrun record for releasing tech products, Wyze might be on track to break it. In November alone, the company announced new sprinklers, vacuums, thermostats, third-gen Wyze Cams, and smartwatches. Wyze isn't stopping there, as it has come through on the launch of its home monitoring service.
Following the recent onslaught of home security systems from Nest, SmartThings, and Ring, Wink is throwing its name into the game and announcing Wink Lookout. The Lookout kit will cost $199, which is more in line with Ring's pricing, but it doesn't ask for any monthly subscription fees. That's both a plus and a minus.
We've seen levitating Bluetooth speakers and connected smart cameras before, but the Moon, a fully funded Indiegogo project, melds those technologies in a $209 ($330 at retail) floating robotic eyeball and base that can also act as a smart hub for your home. That is, if it ever ships. The typical crowdfunding caveats apply. Some Indiegogo projects don't have much of a future, and this is 1-Ring's first.
Canary review: A connected security camera that nails the essentials, stumbles on the bonus features
You don't understand the feeling of violation that a theft causes until you open the door to your home and see everything moved, turned, tossed, and the muddy footprints of a stranger everywhere on your floor, your kitchen cabinets open, and even your bedspread removed and balled up in the garden. That happened to my family's mountain house many, many years ago, and I still remember the feeling of disgust over the scene as well as helplessness with all the police procedures that followed. The perpetrators were never caught, just like any minor theft that occurs in Lebanon — they only took small appliances — and we ended up installing gates and locks on all the windows and doors.I dread ever reliving that experience so when I opened my pharmacy, one of the essentials was a security system that could help me identify any perp and at least give me clarity over what happened in my property while I was not there. Partly to reduce the feeling of violation and partly to feel like I still have some control. Soon I discovered that if I wanted to properly bring my very expensive multi-camera and DVR security system online, I'd need a dedicated IP address and separate ADSL line (because our regular connection sucks here), which are quite expensive, so I kept it off the grid.I came across Canary on Indiegogo and was smitten. Here was a camera that could stream when needed on my existing connection and thus complement my local security system, without much fuss. Somehow, I ended up winning a Canary through a referral program and thus began the wait for the project's fulfillment. Months turned into years, and in the meantime, I got a Piper camera (here's my review), learned that there's something called Dropcam and then Nest (though I didn't buy any), discovered all the different companies making smart connected cameras, and almost forgot about Canary until my unit was shipped to me sometime in 2015. There were hurdles in getting it up and running, but now that it is, I love it. Are there issues that I wish could be ironed out? Definitely. Are they deal-breakers? Maybe for someone else, but not for me.
Piper's home security and automation unit has been improving year over year. Since my initial review, it has overhauled its app and enhanced many of its features, but it also recently released an IFTTT channel that enabled Amazon Alexa integration and let you schedule and automate a couple of actions.
I love crowdfunding projects that work well, especially when the product delivers relatively on time and with most of the features working as promised. Piper's home monitoring / security system is one of these success stories, but despite the product's hardware being great, I have been letdown by its poorly designed software and that didn't change since September 2014 when I first reviewed it. But Piper has been growing up in the meantime, releasing a night vision hardware version, adding Life360 integration, and offering several accessories like sensors and lights, and now it's ready to graduate its software and automation too.
When I was in the process of opening my small pharmacy more than 3 years ago, I contacted a security firm and installed several thousands of dollars worth of surveillance and alarm equipment. It works reliably, but it's a huge pain to change any setting in the system (there's no user interface, just a bunch of wires and keys) or get any footage out of it. It feels antiquated compared to today's more modern Internet-connected smart solutions with simplified experiences, but that was the most appropriate choice at the time.