Canary announces new hardware and features
Canary, the maker of the Canary All-in-one and Canary Flex home security cameras, dropped a blog post to align with CES announcing some changes to their products. The Canary All-in-One security device has stood largely alone in the home security space since it’s release in 2015, where Canary arguably created the smart home security camera niche.
Sure, internet connected security CCTV and IP cameras were common place, but not widely adopted in the typical home. Cost was, and remains, a factor in this, but the need to couple with an alarm system adds to this further. Canary changed things up by creating a single device that combined cloud-connected video monitoring, smart alerts, environmental sensors and an alarm in an affordable package.
This space is started to evolve, however, with innovative products like Lighthouse with it’s Lidar assisted face recognition and mapping features, and the upcoming Moon levitating camera that aims to be a smart home hub all on it’s own. Canary has been forced to evolve, and claims a mantra of value adding for their existing customers. Software updates have continued to add features for existing device owners, with improved alert controls, scene masking, and Live video feeds having been added so far.
New Features
In this new announcement Person Detection, the first of promised AI enhancements, is to arrive this month for all existing customers. To be clear, this is not facial recognition, but rather distinguishes motion events caused by people from other types of motion (Pets, bouncing balls, falling shelves, and so forth). Having this differentiation will allow users to customize their motion alerts further by selecting whether to receive notifications for person and/or non-person events.
A similar feature is coming to Canary Flex owners on a paid plan. Package Detection will arrive in the first half with the promise of identifying a package drop-off, and include the ability to provide ongoing monitoring of the package until you can collect it. What this actually means has not been clarified as yet, but we’ll be sure to hear more on this as the release date draws near.
Integration
The blog post also announced a new integration partnership with Amazon Alexa support joining their existing Google Assistant and Wink integration. Alexa support will enable live video streaming to suitable Echo devices via a voice command. The new integration support is slated to arrive in the coming weeks.
New Hardware
Image: Canary Inc.
Finally, a new entry-level device is coming to complement the All-in-One. Canary View is a lower cost device in the same form factor containing a 147 degree 1080p camera. The alerting, recording and arming capabilities of the All-in-One come along with that, but the environmental sensors and siren are dropped. This makes is a more conventional indoor smart camera, but a cheaper option for monitoring extra rooms if you already have the All-in-One.
The Canary View will be rolled out internationally by mid-year at a price point which is very competitive against other (more conventional) connected video camera offerings.
