When you open the application, you are brought to a list of your devices. You can open the devices, click some shortcuts for options (like turning lights on/off), and activate ‘shortcuts’ which execute a list of commands for your devices. You also have a hot bar at the bottom that you can use to navigate to events that have been recorded from your cameras, monitoring options (I do not pay for these), their online store and your account. One nice feature of the app is that you can set up rules for your devices and create a shortcut to execute a list of instructions. An example of one shortcut I have programmed is when I select “I’m away” my front door locks and notifications for all my cameras turn on. When I choose “I’m home” my front door unlocks, and all notifications turn off.
The first feature I recommend is their recorded events. From the list view, you can filter down to the cameras you would like to view events from and events containing people, vehicles, animals, etc. I recommend adding an additional filter that allows you to adjust the time you are looking for. When you begin scrolling down your list to find a particular time or video, it takes a while to load, and if you click on one video to view and back out, you have to start at the beginning again. Based on my experience this past summer, I chose to have my camera record all events out front of my house, leading to many videos of cars passing by throughout the day. If I had another incident of someone driving their car into my wall, I would need to scroll to find specific time windows, click to see if the video is of the event, and re-scroll down to the time window again if it was not the video. Having the time filter would cut down on time spent searching through videos and the number of videos needing to be loaded in the list.
The second feature I would recommend is to add an existing feature, detection zone, to their options when setting up rules. Currently, you can use a detection zone to set what area you would like your cameras to record if something enters. I would like it to record all events happening in the entire camera view, then have the option to set up a detection zone when managing my alerts so I am only sent notifications when people have entered a certain area.
The third feature that would be nice would be to create “widgets” for some of the commonly used features, like the outdoor lighting. Currently, if I want to turn on a light, I have to open the app, which can take a while to load my devices as they need to connect and select the “On” button next to the light. It would be convenient if they could create a widget to add to your phone's home screen to allow you to one-click on/off devices to reduce the time spent opening and loading the app.
Overall, the application has a nice layout and pretty robust rule creation, making it fun to play around with. The app is easy to navigate, but the lack of being able to filter events really cuts down the usability and is a big hindrance. Overall, it’s a decent app that has a few areas needing improvement.
Overall, the application has a nice layout and pretty robust rule creation, making it fun to play around with. The app is easy to navigate, but the lack of being able to filter events really cuts down the usability and is a big hindrance. Overall, it’s a decent app that has a few areas needing improvement.
