Cheap cameras and accessible network technologies have made remote home monitoring the sort of thing you can set up yourself on a whim over lunch.
But not all do-it-yourself security solutions are made equal. Each has its own set of irks, quirks and perks.
We took a look at a couple of systems currently gaining steam – the Stem iZON Remote Room Monitor and the iWatchLife security service – and discovered some make-or-break differences.
Stem iZON Remote Room Monitor ($129.99; steminnovation.com)
This iOS-only product from American gadget-maker Stem desperately wants to appeal to fans of Apple’s clean design philosophy via its minimalist aesthetic and easy, breezy app.
The white, cylindrical camera connects to a small hemispheric base via a magnet and can be adjusted with simple pushes and twists. It’s a brilliant bit of engineering. You can just place it on a shelf or attach the base to the ceiling with a couple of screws, included.
It also comes with an optional breakaway power cord segment meant to facilitate immediate disconnection should kids get tangled in the wire. Stem clearly believes some parents will want to use the iZON in place of a tradition child monitor in kids’ rooms.
Setup is simple. Just plug the camera into the wall, download Stem’s free iOS app, and follow a quick set of steps that connect the camera to your home router, creating a live video stream from the camera to your phone or tablet wherever you happen to be.
Then it’s just a matter of adjusting settings. One-tap buttons allow you to switch motion and audio alarms on and off, and sliders allow for quick sensitivity adjustments to help you decide how large a disturbance is required to trigger an alert.
You can also adjust the active area – the portion of the frame that can create an alert – by dragging a square across the screen, but it’s clumsy. You can only drag from the upper left corner of the screen, and you’re limited to rectangular shapes.
Still, so far so good. We’ve got well-engineered hardware and a pretty simple app. But the iZON stutters in a crucial area: Delivering alerts.
When something trips the alarm it gets logged in the app’s alerts tab. The only way to learn about alerts is by checking your app or waiting for a tinkling notification. I found the latter unreliable, sometimes arriving late if at all. I’d have preferred the option to receive an email.
Plus, videos are uploaded to your YouTube account, which means you have to wait minutes or more for them to process before viewing. It’s a slow and clunky process, especially if you have multiple alerts to work through.
I want to like the iZON, but in the end it feels more like a toy than a real security solution. It can capture images of burglars breaking in and kids raiding the fridge, but you’ll likely only find out about these events well after the fact.
iWatchLife (From free to $80/year; www.iwatchlife.com)
iWatchLife, by comparison, feels like a home monitoring system for people who take security seriously.
The Ottawa-based company’s service consists of a browser application that runs on both PCs and Macs, plus downloadable apps for iOS devices, Android handsets, and select smart TVs.
I accessed the service from my PC, where I was able to add cameras, manage settings, and flip through recorded events. I also viewed live camera feeds and alerts on my phone. In both cases the software was all business. No frills or flair; just simple, straightforward buttons and icons.
iWatchLife differentiates itself from its competition by offering what it calls “smart event detection,” a fancy way of saying that it tries to keep false alarms at a minimum. It does this in a couple of ways.
