If you’ve ever watched a classic heist movie, you’ll know the thieves always have a way of sneaking past the security cameras. Their methods are usually predictable and involve techniques like:
- Hacking into the security room and erasing/looping the footage
- Carefully sneaking around the blind spots of the camera
- Covering or destroying the camera
While those tricks might spell doom for fictional casinos and museums, there’s a new security camera that would prove a little more formidable. It’s called the HeliosCam, and it combines high tech security features into one all-seeing package.
A security camera with no blind spots
The HeliosCam uses three wide angle cameras to form a complete 360-degree view around the device. This creates a seamless panorama of nearly everything in the vicinity of the camera in ultra high 4k definition while doing the work of three cameras at once.
The camera’s super sensitive Sony CMOS sensors are even sharp enough to pickup color video at night when ambient light is low.
The footage is saved to the included home base, which not only communicates through an encrypted wireless connection with the cameras, but locally stores the recordings too. By using a paired smartphone app, users can scroll through the panorama and see everything their HeliosCam sees in real time.
Powered by the sun
The downside of existing battery powered security cameras has always been the constant recharge schedules to keep them going. With the HeliosCam, three built in solar panels along the top of the camera continually power the device. If you’re using the camera in a shadowy area or indoors, a wired power connection is also possible.
Locally stored footage
To avoid relying on a cloud storage system, where users would inevitably be required to pay a monthly fee to access their own footage, the HeliosCam saves all recordings to an upgradable SD card in the home base.
There’s also USB port on the base that supports an external hard drive to expand video storage space.
If you still need to access your footage from afar, HeliosCam supports using third-party cloud storage accounts such as AWS or Dropbox.
AI-powered smart vision tools
The HeliosCam Kickstarter campaign promises several clever tools to minimize false alerts and better track the camera’s surrounding. By using the processing power of your smartphone, the app is able to automatically recognize and classify faces in videos and pictures.
Using the app you can also set your own “detection targets” such as doorways and driveways that you’d like to limit motion tracking to. That means a door opening when it shouldn’t will trigger the alarm, but a dog in the front yard won’t.
The campaign even mentions license plate registration that will alert you to any unknown vehicles approaching.
Sound the alarm
When the HeliosCam detects something suspicious, there are several alert mechanisms available. Upon activation, an audible alarm sounds directly from the camera, along with flashing strobe lights. The home base will also activate an alarm and send an alert message to the owner’s device.
The cameras can also be used to issue deterrent messages before triggering the full alarm.
How to order the HeliosCam
If you’d like to get your hands on what is essentially the home security version of The Eye of Sauron, you can currently pre-order the HeliosCam on their Kickstarter campaign from $399. Matrix Scene, the company behind HeliosCam, has already blown past their funding goal by over $100k with 34 days left.
Early bird orders are estimated to deliver February 2022.