The only negative of the app was getting support through it, again, only available with the Canary Premium Service. The safety button also worked outside our apartment and almost anywhere in the country as it could track our current location. Part of the Premium Service, the app also has a safety button that would connect us straight to emergency responders, if we were ever in an intrusion or hostage situation. The Canary app was our home base for each of their cameras, where we live-streamed footage, received notifications, spoke through two-way audio, set up smart platform integrations, viewed and downloaded cloud storage, and more. The Canary App A live stream from our Canary app. This was super helpful when we got Amazon packages (read: nearly every day), as we could speak to the delivery guy before he left, making sure our packages were protected inside rather than left out for all to steal. It was nice to be alerted when someone was actually there, and we could check in the livestream to see who it was. Since we live in Brooklyn, the land of cars, squirrels, pigeons, and other moving objects, person detection reduced the number of unnecessary motion notifications we got. Our Canary cameras included person detection, which meant that we only got alerted when our cameras saw people. Especially when we were away from home, it was super quick and easy to be able to control our Canary cameras from our smartwatch. We also scrolled through our household users and viewed a timeline of recent activity, which even included a screenshot of the most recent livestream. 2 Here, we could change the cameras’ mode, whether it was armed in away mode, armed in home mode (where only some of the cameras are armed), or armed in night mode. Apple Watch IntegrationĪpple watches are just one of the many wearables we have in our lives, and our Canary cameras worked with them quite well. However, it would’ve been nice to tell Alexa to arm and disarm our Canary cameras rather than just show their footage to us on different devices. We’re on the Echo Show 8 all the time, so it was really convenient not to have to get out the Canary app just to check in with the livestream. We also showed the footage on our Echo Show 8 when we were in a different room from our Fire TV. Since we have Fire TV, we simply told Alexa to show our footage on the big screen, and when we were finished checking things out, we told Alexa to “hide” the footage. We used Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, to control all of the Canary cameras. Whenever we can do anything through hands-free voice command, we opt-in, and the Canary cameras are no exception. Aside from cloud storage, the Premium Service Membership included a few other features, which you can learn more about in the chart below. And by backing up our footage on a hard drive, we know that even if cloud storage fails, we’ll still have what we need. We like having a long buffer because sometimes we don’t realize when we’ll want to go back and save a clip, like if we had an intrusion. Otherwise, our footage would’ve been stored for free for the first 24 hours only however, thanks to our subscription, that time length expanded to 30 days. StorageĪll of our Canary cameras lacked slots for micro-SD cards, so in order to back up our footage locally, we had to download it from the Canary app, which we were only able to do because we signed up for that Premium Service. Learn more about Canary’s membership on our pricing page. With two-way audio, we didn’t have to trudge downstairs for that Chinese food rather, we just told the guy where our hidden key was and had him bring it right to our apartment. Of course, we shelled out the money for the Premium Service (which includes more than just two-way audio), and we enjoyed having conversations with friends, family, and the occasional takeout delivery person. Canary, on the other hand, charges monthly for two-way audio, which was a bit of a bummer as it’s typically included in the equipment cost. Most smart security cameras we review come with two-way audio, stemming from built-in speakers and microphones.
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