How to unlock the secret life of your home and garden – and be alerted to intruders. Let’s meet Netatmo.
The Secret Life of Pets – an animated film that premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2016 – tells the story of a Jack Russell called Max, and what he gets up to when his owner is at work.
Now, pet owners have a way of monitoring what their animals do when left to their own devices. Using breakthrough deeplearning algorithms, Presence is the first outdoor security camera that can detect and report in real time on any activity at your property – human, animal or vehicle.
It can tell you if anyone is loitering around your home at night, or if a car has entered your driveway. For budding David Attenboroughs, Presence also reveals the secret animal life in your garden or yard. Netatmo Founder Fred Potter likes to observe the animal life in his country house in Brittany. At night, he’s seen foxes, rabbits, ferrets – and noted birds always come at the same time each day.
Launched in 2016, Presence follows the success of Welcome, a smart home camera that uses face recognition technology to identify family members. It can be used to notify users when children or elderly parents are home, and when they leave the house – or when a stranger’s face appears.
Netatmo is the only company to have introduced artificial intelligence into cameras. Both Presence and Welcome can send the names of the people it sees to the user’s smartphone, or alert them to an unknown face or (for Presence) a vehicle.
Privacy settings are fully customizable. Users can decide whether or not the camera should send notifications or store footage. Recorded videos and identification data stay entirely private on the camera’s local SD card. Nevertheless, they can be saved in a personal FTP or Dropbox account if the user wishes.
Both cameras won four “Innovation Awards” at the worldfamous Consumer Electronics Show in 2015 and 2016.
Netatmo’s smart products fall into four categories: weather, security, energy and air care. The company’s first device is the personal Weather Station, which monitors indoor and outdoor environmental elements, including temperature, humidity, air pressure, CO2 level, noise pollution, rain and wind. Working in more than 170 countries, it’s a crowd-sourced weather observation network that operates around the globe.
In November 2013, Netatmo launched their Smart Thermostat, which allows users to monitor and control household heating remotely. Designed by Philippe Starck, it can help them save up to 37% of the energy needed to heat their home.
At CES 2017, Netatmo announced two new products: a Smart Smoke Alarm and an Indoor Security Siren to deter intruders. The company has also collaborated with Legrand and Velux as part of its “with Netatmo” partnership program to create connected solutions integrated into residential home infrastructure. The company, in which Fred Potter and Netatmo’s other founders remain majority shareholders, is passionate about creating smart and useful products for the home.
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