A power outage won’t mean a security outage. At least, not if you have Ooma on your side. The smart home company introduced a new video security camera that boasts facial recognition, offline recording, and a host of other features to help keep you and your loved ones safe. It’s called the Ooma Butterfleye and it’s now available beginning at $200.
With its sleek and compact design, this security camera may just be one of the more discreet pieces of hardware in the smart home security space. The thin, rectangular device might almost be mistaken for a tiny Wi-Fi router or some other innocuous gadget (though the lens in the top lefthand corner gives it away). Design aside, the Butterfleye’s most crucial feature likely lies in its onboard memory and battery backup, which allows you to continue recording even during power and internet outages. The battery promises to keep the camera running for up to four weeks under typical usage conditions, and the more expensive version of the camera promises 32GB of onboard storage. Once you’ve reconnected to Wi-Fi, the camera will upload all recorded clips so you can still see what happened during a power outage, or if you placed the camera in a Wi-Fi dead zone. And with seven days of free storage, you will be able to keep and review that footage without feeling rushed.
Available in both black and white, the Butterfleye does not require a base station, and only needs Wi-Fi to work. That means that you should be able to place the smart camera just about anywhere in your home, and then control it through the companion app on either your Android or iOS device.
The smart camera also boasts artificial intelligence capabilities that can train the Butterfleye to recognize faces, which purports to reduce the number of false positive alerts when it comes to intruders or other unwelcome visitors. If you do want to speak to some unexpected presence in your home, you can take advantage of the two-way audio system embedded in the camera. With both a microphone and a speaker, the Butterfleye lets you talk to people in range of the camera via the app, even while livestreaming.
“To put it simply, Ooma Butterfleye is eyes where you are not,” Ben Nader, general manager of video solutions at Ooma, said in a statement. “Now you can know what happens at your home or business when you’re away, through a next-generation security camera that’s easy to set up, easy to place wherever it’s needed, easy to use, and smart enough to limit false alarms.”
The white version of the Ooma Butterfleye is available now for $200 while the black version will set you back $250. Both are available from both the Ooma website, as well as Ooma Butterfleye.