If U.K. smart home brand Hive hoped to right away steal a number of the shine from opponents with its new Hive View indoor digicam, it has succeeded spectacularly. With is satiny end and distinctive “seize and go” modular design—the creation of Swiss industrial designer Yves Béhar—this safety digicam impresses proper out of the field.
The cubed digicam unit can detach from the magnetic mount on its light-weight brushed-metal stand and function for brief period on battery energy. That provides you the choice of quickly coaching the View on one other room, comparable to once you want maintain tabs in your youngsters whilst you attend to one thing upstairs. It’s a design element that can most likely have loads of utility for lots of parents.
That’s the restrict of the View’s innovation, although. Inside you’ll discover some pretty normal options: a 130-degree wide-angle subject of view, 1080p reside streaming, night time imaginative and prescient, and event-triggered recording. Even its people-detection functionality, which distinguishes between biped-triggered exercise and all different movement, is widespread sufficient now that it’s not a lot of a differentiator.
Together with the View, Hive has rolled out a brand new cloud service, Hive Video Playback. For $6 a month, you’ll be able to view as much as 30 days of video recordings (with out this subscription, you get solely 24 hours of storage with the digicam buy). As an inaugural provide, Hive is offering the primary month free of charge.
The Hive View detaches from its magnetic mount so you’ll be able to quickly relocate it to different rooms.
The Hive View is supposed for use as a part of the model’s bigger smart home systems, so it’s being bought as a part of the brand new Hive Near Dwelling starter pack. This contains lights, door and window sensors, plugs, and a Hive Hub for $350. Alternately, you’ll be able to unfold the price of the over two years at $14.58 per 30 days.
Should you’re already a Hive good dwelling buyer and need to add the View to your setup, or for those who’re not however simply need the digicam, you should purchase it standalone for $200 or buy a double-pack for $340.
Hive clients solely must plug within the View and faucet “add new machine” within the Hive app to start the steps of getting the digicam on-line. If the View is your first Hive product, you’ll have the extra steps of first establishing a Hive account. In both case, it’s a comparatively painless setup technique of connecting your cellphone to the digicam by way of Bluetooth after which connecting to your Wi-Fi community.
Exercise is logged in a timeline from which you’ll play video clips of the triggering occasion.
The digicam stand’s sturdy round base retains it from being simply toppled off a desk or shelf, however mounting can be included within the package deal if you wish to affix the View to a wall or ceiling. The stem can rotate and tilt, and the digicam itself can rotate freely when connected to the stand, giving loads of viewing-angle flexibility. The USB energy cable attaches to the rear of the digicam’s underside, although, so there could also be a little bit of maneuvering required to maintain the twine from getting tangled with the stand, relying on the way you contort the digicam.
The digicam dice detaches simply from its magnetic mount everytime you untether it to maneuver to a different room, and it reattaches with a satisfying click on once you return it to its stand. I discovered myriad makes use of for this grab-and-go characteristic: monitoring my children whereas I labored in one other a part of the home, ensuring the cats stayed off the kitchen counters after I left cooking dinners unattended for a number of moments, and even monitoring my entrance porch by way of a window on a day I used to be anticipating a package deal. Actually, the makes use of appear restricted solely by your each day rhythms and creativeness. The battery solely holds a cost for about an hour, however I discovered that to be greater than sufficient for these ad-hoc makes use of.
Managing the digicam from the Hive app is fairly intuitive. As soon as added, the View takes its place together with some other linked Hive gadgets within the app’s honeycomb show. Tapping the View’s icon opens the digicam’s dwelling display screen, the place the reside stream is displayed above a timeline of detected movement and audio occasions. Tapping on any considered one of these occasions will play the corresponding video clip proper within the live-stream window, so you’ll be able to instantly see what tripped the digicam’s sensors with out having to lose time navigating to a separate video clip library. The timeline defaults to the current day, however you’ll be able to toggle to a scrolling calendar that shows the present week and choose one other day’s recordings for those who’re a Video Playback subscriber.
The picture high quality was glorious, with vibrant colours and crisp particulars. Night time imaginative and prescient illuminated my whole lounge with even gentle and good distinction. Audio was robust as nicely, with no distortion or booming.
Hive View precisely acknowledged human exercise.
The View’s complement of security measures all labored fairly reliably. You possibly can choose to be alerted to detected exercise by way of push notification and/or e-mail, and each of those strategies have been well timed and correct. I stored particular person detection activated more often than not and it unfailingly acknowledged the distinction between the two-legged and four-legged members of the family. The View’s scheduling characteristic was additionally useful for limiting monitoring to designated hours so I didn’t should disable the digicam each time folks returned dwelling. The Hive app contains easy, intuitive controls for managing all of those options, making it straightforward to manage the View even for those who’ve by no means used a wise digicam earlier than.
Backside Line
There’s no arguing with the Hive View’s attractiveness and the enchantment of with the ability to quickly relocate it with no huge logistical trouble. However when you get past these perks, the View is a reasonably abnormal digicam. It lacks superior however widespread options like geofencing and exercise zones that present higher monitoring accuracy and adaptability. There’s additionally no Amazon Alexa or IFTTT integration (although different Hive merchandise do work with the latter). Proper now, regardless of being bought as a part of a Hive good dwelling pack, the View doesn’t even work with different Hive merchandise—the corporate says full integration will are available February.
None of this implies the Hive View isn’t an excellent digicam. Its simplicity—together with the supremely user-friendly Hive app—make it an ideal choice for safety novice’s first good cam. And for those who’ve already invested in Hive merchandise, the View is the no-brainer choice for including eyes to your good dwelling system. Should you don’t fall into a type of camps, higher choices are on the market.