Honeywell bundled an impressive variety of features into the employer’s crowdsourced Smart Home Security starter kit, including a safety camera, clever domestic integration, and Alexa. But it is not what Honeywell included a lot as what it not noted from this $450 kit that offers us pause.
This product lacks proper facial recognition functions and doesn’t offer professional monitoring, making its fee too high whilst greater-established brands, including Nest, Abode, and SimpliSafe, provide less pricey and extra expansive starter protection kits.
Design
The Honeywell Smart Home Security kit comes with a base station (sold one after the other, without the sensors, for $350), two access sensors, and a key-chain faraway.
The base station is the principal act on this security package, and in case you said it seems like a security camera plopped directly to an Amazon Echo, you would not be too far off. At the top is a 2-megapixel, 1080p digital camera with a sliding privacy shade. The bottom is a part of the base lighting up in a diffusion of colors, like pink to indicate it is muted and green to suggest a departure countdown (by default, this is set to 60 seconds).
If you want to speak for your pets even as you are far from home, you will experience that the base station gives -way to audio. There’s additionally an 85-decibel alarm inner, as well as a Z-Wave radio for pairing clever domestic add-ons. And if you want to show on your smart lights, you could command Amazon Alexa to achieve this thru the Honeywell base station.
The entry sensors can be affixed to windows or doors, though they’re extra than twice the size of the 1. Five-inch sensors you get from SimpliSafe’s respective security kit. Once the Honeywell access sensors are installed, their presence may be very apparent. Conversely, the protected key chain faraway ought to use a few extra inches of plastic, as it’s too small to be a remote and too big to match on a package of keys.
Unlike the Abode and Nest safety structures, there is no cell backup provided at the Honeywell base station. There is a backup battery for strength outages, although it lasts for the most effective half an hour.
Additional Options
If you have a huge house or want to feature on different Honeywell-made add-ons, you can purchase the offered one at a time Indoor MotionViewer ($a hundred and fifty), Outdoor MotionViewer ($200), and Indoor Motion Sensor ($50) to pair with the bottom station. Additional entry sensors and keychain remotes run $40 and $30 apiece, respectively.
Setup
It took me much less than 10 mins, to set up the Honeywell Smart Home Starter Kit. Before you may even plug it in, however, you will need to download the Honeywell Home app to your iPhone or Android device.
The app takes care of most of the configuration, including connecting the camera to Wi-Fi and pairing the exceptional sensors. It also walks you via setting up features like geofencing, which makes use of your smartphone’s region to replace between domestic and away mode on every occasion you go away from the house. And the app will ask you to input your Amazon credentials for Alexa to get the right of entry.
The Honeywell clever home protection system also offers facial popularity capabilities. They’re free to use, in contrast to what you’ll get with Nest protection cameras, which require an annual rate. To application these features, you will need to snap 4 pics of your face at unique angles, which might be then saved as a reference for the facial recognition software program.
The app will help you agenda the facial-reputation feature to run for a maximum of most effective 2 hours an afternoon, which Honeywell stated ought to be enough for maximum customers. You’re additionally restrained to two face profiles, which appear extraordinarily restrained for any family. The agency stated it is running on a subscription-based totally option for those who require more “faces” and longer tracking intervals.
The app will let you agenda the facial-reputation feature to run for the most effective 2 hours a day.
You may not want a good deal of hardware to set up the relaxation of the security package. The entry sensors persist with the wall with sturdy adhesive, and the keypad remote requires the mere long press of a few buttons to pair with the base station. If you need to feature the circle of relatives participants in the account, you may achieve this within the Honeywell Home app’s settings panel.
Professional Monitoring
There is no expert monitoring to be had with the Honeywell smart home safety package, even though you may get introduced advantages via paying a month-to-month membership price. For $5 a month, or $50 a yr, Honeywell offers 30 days of garage and 1,500 movies. There’s also a $15-a-month (or $150-a-12 months) subscription for 60 days of garage and 3,000 videos. Each membership consists of discounts on certain DIY Honeywell Home merchandise and gets the right of entry to beta testing functions before they’re launched as over-the-air updates.
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How Honeywell Smart Home Security Works
Most of the interplay with the Honeywell smart domestic protection base station takes vicinity thru the Honeywell Home mobile app. It’s right here that you can pop in on the live stream from the camera, kind via the safety device’s notification history, or speedy transfer amongst Home Away and Night modes, the latter of to cause an alarm for the entry sensors however, now not for any motion.
If deciding to feature any extra cameras or Honeywell-branded thermostats, you may get the right of entry to those from the principal screen of the app. If you don’t usually have your phone nearby, you may use the key chain faraway to exchange protection modes as a substitute.
The stay digital camera feed is outstanding for peeking in while you’re now not at domestic, even though it’s a chunk gradual to load compared to my revel in with the Nest security cameras. It takes about three to five seconds for the circulation to come back via, specifically when using your telephone’s cell information.
The live digital camera feed is the first-rate for peeking in even as you’re now not at domestic.
The facial popularity feature does now not paintings as easily as on the Nest IQ security cameras. I registered my face, but the Honeywell smart home safety base station digital camera couldn’t recognize me especially, while I caught my face directly in the front of the digicam. It wasn’t until I re-registered my face that the digital camera became able to as it should be picked out me.
