Nest adds new cameras and a wireless alarm system to its product suite
Alphabet-owned Nest announced several new products today, all of them focused on home security. Two new cameras have been introduced-the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor and Nest Hello-along with Nest Secure, a multi-device home alarm system powered by motion sensors.
Both cameras are intended for outdoor installation, and they add facial-recognition capabilities via Google's FaceNet technology. Nest's cameras could already alert you if a human figure came into view, but FaceNet adds the ability to exempt trusted people, along with some other new functionality. Nest Secure is similar in basic concept to most home alarm systems you may have seen; while armed, it sounds an alarm if someone enters the home without disabling it. But it offers a couple of alarm-disabling alternatives to entering a passcode when you enter.
The key barrier to entry for Nest products remains: a full suite of them can be expensive to operate. It's not because of the products' purchase prices, but rather because most of the best features are only available with a subscription to the Nest Aware service. Let's say you install a handful of Nest Cam IQ devices throughout your home and live video isn't enough for you. You want to be able to look at video from last night to see if there was an intruder present. You can do that, but the video is stored in the cloud through Nest Aware.
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