Cameras that monitor the home environment are seen as both creepy and convenient, but investors and technologists are betting that convenience will win out, as homeowners see the value in keeping a watchful eye on their biggest investment and its inhabitants. The Lighthouse camera is perhaps the clearest example of a smart camera that uses deep learning to deliver intelligent updates about who is in a house and what they are doing there. The Andy Rubin-backed startup markets the camera as a way for homeowners to know whether the kids are home, the dog has been walked, and the house has been cleaned. Users can program the system to alert them if their expectations about what is supposed to be happening at home are not met.
Lighthouse is meant to help homeowners monitor any and every part of the house, not just the parts that are near the Wi-Fi router. For that reason, the camera’s designers chose an extended range antenna made by Taoglas.
“We were not as constrained by size as mobile devices are, so we were able to grow in size and use the space we had to get more gain from the antenna,” said Zach Brand, director of hardware at Lighthouse. Lighthouse required a custom cable length to connect the antennas, which Taoglas was also able to supply.
“Wherever a homeowner places their Lighthouse device, it will be able to deliver that robust Wi-Fi connectivity,” said Dermot O’Shea, co-CEO of Taoglas.
The Lighthouse camera sells for $300, and users need to pay an additional $100 – $120 a year for access to the cloud-based software that tells them what is happening at home. All home video is stored in the cloud, meaning that if an intruder deactivates or steals the camera, users are likely to have a video of the event.
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