“Since until now there were no shipping HomeKit enabled security cameras, it really didn’t matter which platform you went with,” Terry White writes for Terry White’s Tech Blog. “However, that has just changed now that D-Link has shipped the Omna 180 Cam [US$199.99].”
“Now that we have a HomeKit enabled security cam there’s a choice that will integrate nicely with your other smart home HomeKit enabled gear,” White writes. “For example, I can now see my new security cam not only in the Home app on my iPhone and iPad, but I can even see the live feed in the Home app on my Apple Watch. Cool!”
“The image quality is GREAT!” White writes. “The Omna 180 Cam has both a microphone and speaker. This means that you can not only see what’s going on in the room, but you can also talk to anyone in the room as your voice will play through the built-in speaker… Probably most shocking missing feature is that there is no way to pinch and zoom into the image. I was simply stunned that I can’t zoom into the live feed. It’s not possible to zoom in via the Home App or the Omna app. WTH.”
“One last thing to note is that if you want to access your HomeKit enabled devices from outside your home WiFi network, you will need an Apple TV,” White writes. “Apple uses the Apple TV as a hub for HomeKit devices to be accessed outside the home.”
Much more, including screenshots, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The D-Link Omna 180 can also act as a motion trigger to activate HomeKit accessories. For example, turning on HomeKit-capable lights when the camera detects motion.
Thanks Terry! That last sentence just told me more about HomeKit than I’ve seen anywhere else! I’ll check these cameras…
Only works inside. No. I want to see and yell at the jerk BEFORE he breaks in! From anywhere.
HomeKit will be very similar to AppleTV. Yet another disaster where Apple drops the ball and lets their competitors take the lead. Some segments of the Apple brain trust need to get over themselves into believing that people will throw hard earned money at half finished crap.
My Canary shows me live feeds of my house in HD, and I can talk and set off an alarm. It automatically sets AWAY mode when I leave the house and sends me notifications when it detects motion. Then it sends me a picture to my AppleWatch. No HomeKit necessary.
I have many Canaries and recommend them, however to correct the prior commentary; you can listen but you cannot talk — unless you consider setting off the loud alarm talking
About bloody time!
Now let’s see what the hackers can do to it. Hopefully nothing. Imagine IoT being secure! It could happen. 😉
Still do not get why Apple does not offer HomeKit on the Macintosh.
I have a number of HomeKit devices from ElGato but would much rather use my Mac than any iOS device. Same for using the Apple TV for a server rather than a Macintosh.
I have been looking at cameras (Canary and Netatmo) but both have some issues.
Piper is good for inside as well. (www.getpiper.com) and as for outside I have looked into Skybell (www.skybell.com) Usually thieves ring the doorbell to see if anyone is home. But Skybell is motion activated and will send the video feed to your iPhone and you can actually ask what that person wants through it.
Right so one has to buy a mediocre AppleTV to get this to work outside the house when I can go get a standard device that lets me see it all on the phone from anywhere for around half the price of the ATV let alone the D-Link kit. It certainly seems like the patients have truly taken over the boardroom at Apple’s asylum. This is the sort of blackmail that Microsoft were expert in when they felt they had a monopoly. They were badly misguided too. Do you laugh or cry at this comedy of errors where they test your loyalty to the extreme by forcing you to buy an average product to make the rest work through it, while then a little later urging you to expensively upgrade when they finally make that key product up to the standard it should have been at birth to do its original job.