On Wednesday, SwitchBot released its latest outdoor security camera. The smart home company bumped the resolution to 3K and now offers AI video descriptions, a feature that most security companies have added in the past year.
SwitchBot’s new outdoor pan/tilt camera, starting at $80, includes motion tracking and object recognition and offers you the choice between wired and wireless connections. It can also hold up to 512GB of local video clips or offer cloud storage as an option in its subscription plans.
The real standout is the AI recognition technology, which allows the camera to describe the events it captures. “A man in a UPS uniform walks on a porch with a package,” for example. The camera can also provide daily summaries of everything it’s seen, saving you even more time.
I’ve seen these features move into cameras from major brands including Ring, Nest, Blink and Arlo over the past year. They usually come with a hefty subscription fee around $20, but SwitchBot’s is lower than usual, starting at $5 per month.
Video descriptions are now common in home security, but SwitchBot is adding an animal species focus, too.
The only AI identification features you can get for even less come from Eufy, which is planning to offer onboard AI descriptions for free sometime later this year.
A representative from SwitchBot didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
SwitchBot has one trick, though, that really sets its camera apart from the pack: Its recognition features are specifically trained to identify wildlife, down to the species level. While most AI cams can tell the difference between dogs, cats and deer, this SwitchBot camera’s abilities go a little deeper. That’s useful if you want to get notifications like, “A coyote enters your yard,” alerting you that it may not be safe for your outdoor cats or other pets. And its spotting the difference between a possum and a raccoon could help you plan your pest management.
The camera also supports Alexa and Google Home, so you can use Echo Shows and Nest Hubs to view the live feed.
While SwitchBot’s camera and plans don’t currently include facial recognition, AI technology like this can sometimes be repurposed for other tasks, such as recognizing individual people, which raises surveillance and privacy concerns. I’ve asked SwitchBot whether it plans to address these concerns and will update this story when I receive a response. In the meantime, I’ll have to find a coyote and convince it to run around my yard for testing purposes.
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