If you’ve ever threaded a pair yards of energy cable from an outside safety digital camera to an indoor electrical outlet, you’ll perceive that the phrase “wire free” can induce giddiness. That’s largely why the Eyecloud’s 100-percent cordless Sticker-Eye was such a Kickstarter success. It’s additionally mount free (It attaches to surfaces magnetically. Sticker-Eye—get it?) and subscription free, primarily eliminating the largest ache factors related to proudly owning a house safety digital camera.
None of that will matter a lot if it had the surveillance abilities of a half-blind watchdog when you set it up. Happily, AI expertise is Eyecloud’s specialty, and Sticker-Eye has a few of the most correct good detection we’ve seen.
This overview is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best home security cameras. Go there to learn opinions of competing merchandise.
Design
Thanks to its magnetic base, the cylindrical digital camera will be caught anyplace you will have a metallic floor. If you don’t have one, a magnetic mount is offered that’s simply affixed to wooden or masonry with a few screws, and you may stick the digital camera to that. (A theft-proof mount is bought individually for $10.) Indoors, the digital camera will stand freely on any flat floor, or it may be put in on a wall or ceiling utilizing the magnetic mount or an adhesive sticker in case you don’t wish to drill any holes.
The Sticker-Eye is powered by a built-in 6000mAh rechargeable battery that ought to run for as much as two months on a cost. When it must be recharged, you simply pull the digital camera down and plug it into an outlet. Curiously, Eyecloud provides a USB-A to USB-C charging cable for this, however not an AC adapter. I needed to scare one up from one other machine.
The Sticker-Eye camear has a 130-degree viewing angle with a tilting head.
The digital camera has a 130-degree area of view and captures 1080p video. The digital camera head will be manually tilted to get the optimum viewing angle. Sticker-eye all the time operates in standby mode, waking solely when it detects movement. At that time, its built-in AI analyzes the transferring object and, if it identifies it as human, the digital camera begins recording video and continues till the motions stops. A single video clips lasts from 5 to 30 seconds; if the movement occasion exceeds 30 seconds, the digital camera begins a brand new recording.
This sort of AI evaluation is usually carried out within the cloud, thus requiring the digital camera proprietor to pony up for an ongoing subscription to allow it. Sticker-Eye can analyze objects itself, due to an embedded Intel chip, permitting all video clips to be saved on board. The digital camera is available in 8GB and 32GB fashions, every able to storing hundreds of surveillance clips.
Setup and efficiency
With Eyecloud having eradicated probably the most advanced set up steps, the majority of Sticker-Eye’s setup is connecting it to the app and to your Wi-Fi. The app prompts you thru the method of logging in to your community and pairing the digital camera, so most of your effort is spent discovering a spot to place the Sticker-Eye.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGThe Sticker-Eye app retains issues good and easy.
Once you will have the digital camera positioned to your liking, you’ll wish to configure your alert settings. You entry these by tapping the cog icon beneath the Sticker-Eye thumbnail on the units display screen. The Smart Alert choices are movement detection, individual detection, and facial recognition.
Person detection ignores the motion of timber, autos, and animals, so it guarantees the less false alerts than monitoring for basic movement. You can even choose a detection sensitivity—Sticker-Eye has a barely hotter setting for indoor monitoring than out of doors—and decide to have the digital camera’s built-in siren go off when it detects an occasion.
When the digital camera acknowledges a human, it bounds them in a inexperienced field for simple identification within the alert and video clip. You could make these alerts much more helpful by activating Facial Detection and importing photographs of as much as 20 acquainted faces within the app. I added my entire household, they usually have been recognized with 100-percent accuracy. You can select to obtain named notifications when these faces are detected if, as an illustration, you wish to be notified when your youngsters get dwelling from college. Otherwise, you’ll be able to block notifications of those individuals to scale back the variety of alerts you get.
The video Sticker-Eye captured in my testing was sharp and vibrant with correct colours. There was no fisheye distortion or washed-out areas from lamps and daylight. The digital camera mechanically switches to night-vision mode when it will get darkish and offers loads of illumination and distinction to see clearly in an in any other case unlit space.
Sticker-Eye is rated IP54 for out of doors use, which is considerably lower than the IP65 score most out of doors cameras carry. It means its protected against restricted mud ingress and water splashing from any route. I’d be hesitant to depart this digital camera exterior in a heavy rainstorm. That’s price contemplating in case you’re in space that experiences very moist seasons.
The Sticker-Eye app
Sticker-Eye’s companion app is as no-nonsense because the digital camera itself. The live-stream pane is about towards a clear white background with aa` toolbar for the digital camera’s controls alongside the underside. Viewing the feed in full-screen mode, the toolbar disappears till you contact the display screen.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGVideo recordings are time stamped and labeled with the form of detection that triggered them.
A library of video clips will be accessed from the machine display screen. Each video is time stamped and labeled with its detection technique (individual, face, movement). All movies are saved on the digital camera, however you’ll be able to obtain anyone to your cellphone throughout playback. By default, the library shows all of your movies, however you an filter them to see solely these mechanically recorded by occasions, manually recorded, or downloaded to your machine.
Verdict
It’s uncommon that any safety digital camera delivers such a friction-free expertise, not to mention an organization’s first product. With Sticker-Eye, Eyecloud has succeeded in giving customers what they need—a cheap digital camera that’s simple to put in and function, with AI options that really do what they’re imagined to. I may quibble concerning the lack of configurable movement zones or Alexa and Google Assistant help, however these can, and sure will likely be, addressed in future iterations. As it’s, Sticker-Eye is an uncommonly good digital camera worthy of consideration by anybody wanting a easy, dependable dwelling safety answer.