My husband is a big fan of the Internet of Things and it’s safe to say we have a connected home. My friends laugh at me as my Apple Watch and iPhone are constantly buzzing and beeping when I leave home but my husband lovesto try the latest gadgets and make our home ‘smart’.
I think there’s a lot to be said for having everything connected and I like the fact we have a smart thermostat, smart lights, smart sockets, internet doorbell, internet connected weather station, smart tv, internet connected SONOS, temperature, humidity sensors in every room and smart smoke alarms. In fact there are only a few things we haven’t yet tried. We don’t have a smart meter but we do monitor our energy consumption. This is a great way to help us save money. Even our fishtank is connected to the internet so my husband can keep an eye on the temperature when we’re away from home!
Don’t even ask me how my husband has time to monitor all of these things but I love the fact I can put the water on to heat up as we’re leaving karate so the water will be hot by the time we get home.
So when we we offered the Canary Day and Night All-in-One IP Camera from Maplins of course I said yes. This was not for my benefit, as I’m a bit clueless about all this Connected Home stuff, but for my husband. He was like a kid at Christmas when it arrived and soon had it out of the box and set up.
I’ve quizzed him about it and what follows are his thoughts. Set up was nice and easy, and it’s installed in the corner of our open plan living area. It’s very wide angled and covers the whole of our living area. We downloaded the free app from the App Store which notifies us when it detects movement. It was simple to add the Canary to our home wifi and it just worked.
The Day and Night All-in-One IP Camera has a home, away and night mode. We both downloaded the app and it detects my phone coming and going and doesn’t send alerts when I’m at home during the day. Although it records when it detects movement it only keeps these for 24 hours, and you have to pay if you want to keep it for longer.
It costs £79 a year for 30 days of video (when it detects movement), two-way talk, and desktop access. We’re not sure if this is per camera or if you kitted out your whole house. Paying also enables night mode (i.e. you tell it what time you go to bed and it records if it detects motion).
It’s one of the cheaper wireless cctv cameras but to get the full features you need to pay the yearly fee. My husband is glad we have it as it gives us peace of mind but I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t record at night – I’m sure intruders are just as likely to break in during the night as they are during the day. Hopefully it will give us some peace of mind when we next go away though.
Disclosure – we were gifted the Day and Night All-in-One IP Camera for the purpose of this review.
This looks incredible! We would find this so useful in our home x