There are two ways to home security: reactive and proactive. The former only acts when a B&E occurs, while the latter aims to prevent it from happening in the first place. Instead of watching helplessly at bulgars ransacking your home through indoor security cams, the Toucan Home Security System covers the outside of your home to proactively prevent break ins from happening. But before you can get the outside secured, you will need to overcome the dreadful installation process, which usually requires costly installation by ‘professionals’ or a rocket scientist, if you are DIY-ing. This is where Toucan shines: it does not require no tearing of walls, while promising infinite power supply to the system, well, that’s as long as you pay the bills.
The basic system consists of two parts: the Toucan camera and a smart socket. The smart socket goes in between the wall-mounted porch light’s socket and the light bulb, and has a USB port that powers the Toucan camera. The camera unit itself is weatherproof and packs a wide angle lens camera that pushes clear HD Live video to your smart device, a passive infrared sensor for motion detection and a microphone and speaker combo that allows for 2-way communication. Since power is always an issue for security cameras, thus we though the idea of leveraging on the existing porch light for power is pretty ingenious. Up till now, security cameras either required messy cabling, or powered by batteries which needs to be replaced or recharge.
The smart socket not only solves the security camera’s power requirement issue, but it also doubles as a Bluetooth unit that allows you to remotely turn the light on or off, or preset the light up and off timing. There’s a downside to this though. The smart socket will increase the over length of the lighting, which means if the porch light’s housing isn’t long enough, the light bulb may end up jutting out of the housing, or worst, prevents the housing from being fitted back.
There’s another boon with Toucan’s system. It uses both Bluetooth and WiFi technology, which are common wireless signals our smartphones can communicate with and therefore, it needs no hub or such to get it up and going. However, the basic package only covers your front door and so, if you are looking to cover every entry points like the windows and monitors the post box, you will need to acquire additional components like motion detectors and smart sensors.
Functions and features wise, Toucan Home Security System is everything what today’s smart home security has to offer, including 2-way communication with whoever is at the door, live feed and recording of video in HD, automatic push notification of alerts, and 100db siren alarm to scare the shit out of any unwanted visitors. Toucan Home Security System will be available sometime in mid-2016 through Amazon, as well as brick-and-mortar retailers, priced at $199 and up.
