today we're going to look at this Netatmo smart outdoor camera with siren
that looks remarkably like a light thing to me gordon
you're right gary that's the other feature of this it actually has a light built in so is it a
is it a smart camera with a light or a light with a smart camera well you know me i'm all about the
ease of installation the minute you mention the word smart i get a little bit worried
but there only seems to be three connections on the back of that thing so it must be simple
to fit do you agree yeah that's it it is just designed to take down that outdoor light and
put this in so let's see how you got on installing one gary so this is what we get in the packet the
bracket's really important gordon you can clearly see it also says up on it yeah it's always a top
tip to follow the instructions it is so this bracket needs to be mounted on the wall at
an angle obviously with the up position in the correct place and then secured to the fabric of
the building obviously we're mimicking it here in the workshop so screw the bracket on at an angle
then we'll go through the process of making all the final connections so cable next slightly
that you'll have a fitting on a wall possibly that you're taking off with its switching line neutral
and cpc already in place this screw here gordon what's that door right back this is really clever
black back this one back off and you might have noticed a tie wrap or a cable tie on the actual
um lighting camera itself just hook it on there oh and you're just trapping that with a screw
yeah sort of strain relief so it doesn't drop onto the floor yeah remember you'll be doing this at
height so the next thing i'm going to do is the the cpc on there to also add a little
bit of security as well so nip that one on to earth the back plate like so and then it's just
make those final connections so pop in the switching line now so it's straightforward
nice and simple so take your old light fitting on connect your new light and camera in place
okay what's this for introducing the bracket to hold the arm on this allows us to rotate and tilt
but there's one more nice little thing beforehand that that bolt we saw earlier on for the cable tie
all right yes just need to back that back off a little bit and then there's a key way it's like
a smiley face yeah i'm going to be 90 degrees out to start with so located into position and just
watch now uh just pointing out in there and then i'm just going to rotate it for you so now it's
up and gotta level it off okay we're gonna do that careful so i might come back to that in a minute
okay so so this bracket's also a swivel as well so you can set the direction of the camera yeah so
you've got both options so just gonna nip this one up now i'm going to take a minute or do you know
what i'm like gordon for making sure i'm level and in the right position you wouldn't want it out of
a trim here okay tilt it and just make sure we're in the right position just a final adjustment
and then i'll remember that cable tie i think i'm gonna get the side cutters now you're a happy man
that was incredibly easy to fit and i've actually fitted two of it one inside for that demonstration
there but also if it weren't outside we'll see the footage from that later on you've
added some experience before Gordon i've actually fitting smart cameras what's your feeling on other
products that you've fitted yeah well yeah it's an early convert the smart technology yeah so
i've installed a lot of other smart products or supposedly smart products on the market and one
thing you know this is the first time you've sort of seen that someone's actually thought
about the installer i.e it's easy to install a lot of other systems you have another box a
remote power supply and then the wire between the camera and the power supply is pre-terminated so
you can't shorten it so it's a case of where do you where do you where do you hide it and this
is obviously you don't have that it's just that simple mains connection and it's direct to wi-fi
and that's just the start of the smart features in this it absolutely is isn't it so it's easy
to install and i've carried that process on about the ease now when i'm thinking smart i'm thinking
backing up to a cloud-based uh area i'm gonna have to pay subscription and things like that what
they've done with that gordon yeah so again the clever part of this is that actually all of the
storage takes place in the device itself there's an inbuilt sd card okay and so, therefore, there's
no need for a cloud service although you you could transfer the footage to your own dropbox account
but when you're using the app obviously all smart things have an app you're actually downloading the
data from the camera itself so that's really good so that removes the subscription based system that
other cameras have is that true yeah it is and that can be yeah if you put a few cameras in that
can be quite a substantial yearly investment you need to make to obviously keep up that
cloud service so we've gone from easy install to thinking about the electrician and the end user
with actually how we store the information then we got into looking at the app didn't we and that's
where you came into play and how did you find the app yeah okay i always get the uh the difficult
bit and that's the the the commissioning procedure gary but was it difficult gordon well let's have a
look so we're going to add a camera to our system so we've powered up the camera it's in now it's in
a learning mode it's waiting to be discovered so i'm going to go through there searching for camera
oh it's found the camera so yeah select the one we're going to add to our network we're going to
add it to our efix network start the pairing process and there's a drink to allow it onto
the network so some sort of uh reconnection and disconnection of the wi-fi as part of that process
let's change color now what's that doing that's infrared actually is the clever
bit we're going to scan the qr code to allow it onto the apple home kit
it came in the box so we've done that so now i'm going to finish pairing up away
yep it's on the system i'm going to add it to a room gary's view we're not going to change
any of the settings at this stage for the name of the camera or the siri settings there you can see
the camera is now online it's uh in an infrared mode we can see it already there's the live view
hello there's you gary you doing out there was good that was quick okay it's quick and you can
see that this it's often happens when you bring these systems online to start updating their
firmware which is quite normal it's already detected the car at the end of the at the end
of the drive there oh you're back again gary what are you doing now i'm in disguise this time put a
hat on took my jacket off yeah i'm away with it there you go someone's just pinched the camera
well that looked really simple we saw it being used with apple home kit does it work with
anything else gordon yeah it does work with a lot of the other assistants out there at
google and she who should not be not be named and yeah the other the other popular ones out
there you might not have spotted that but the clever bits i didn't have to put in any wi-fi
passwords or anything i just used this qr code because we were using the home kit one but just
have another version there so it's actually the camera looks for the qr codes and then it knows so
that's the pairing procedure and we also found we love this yeah this is a great better match
the red card if you ever need to do a factory reset you use the red card you give the camera
a red card and send it off your network and start again and just thought that again that's just that
that's a nice easy to use design feature sometimes you look at these things try to do a factory reset
for whatever reason you might have moved house or you know you want to move it to another network
that can sometimes be yeah a painful process but yeah we love the red card it so we've got
it on the wall we've actually set it up and obviously then we started playing around with
it ready for a couple of weeks on the on the actual go haven't we to really get used to all
the features in it so i think it's worth looking at some of those features now not all of them
just a few of them okay then gordon walk me through some of these great features okay
so we can dim the light uh depending on the area of uh installed in you may need it uh a brightly
lit area you may just want subtle illumination and obviously we can have the light permanently
switched on or in response to uh triggered events so like auto would be you walk into the
area the lamp would come on yeah yeah so it's an alternative for a pir so let's just show that here
so we've got the lamp on auto mode there someone's going to walk into the area and then right
that's really good now when we're talking about areas can we activate different areas based on
perhaps something that we want to protect or be notified when somebody walks into it
yeah so we can we can obviously have a dedicated detection area so you might not want the lamp to
trigger all of the time so you're basically going to restrict the area where you get alerts from so
what i've done there set up a little area on our e-fix sign so there's one area okay can you have
more than one area is in the area yes you can have multiple areas um what you can't do is have
them uh overlapping so there you can see i've set another area uh and of course put on our ev charge
block we've looked at in a different video i don't think anyone's gonna walk off with that though no
okay so you've got two areas now so in auto mode obviously the light would come on and you can
also set an alarm or do you have to activate the alarm yourself no so you have to set the you get a
trigger so somebody walks into the area and then you get an alert to say somebody is in the area
at which point you can choose whether to trigger the audible alarm to sort of should i say scare
them off okay so we've had somebody in the area now oh yeah so there's an alert and you can
activate the alarm yes the sounder and hopefully that would perhaps scare them off yeah hopefully
well you touched on some of the great features there gordon one we really liked we didn't show
in there is the downloading the day in 60 seconds where it shows you the full footage of that day
that's really good isn't it yeah it's been really good for us because it's like yeah people are
saying oh did that parcel get delivered yesterday you can see all that things it's you know those
detection modes as well it does pick up you know it'll detect the difference between a person yeah
a car another object or even a pet and we've discovered there's even a cat regularly visits
our yard well here's some proof the camera picked up this cat one evening gordon yeah now obviously
that is a cat but if it wasn't a cat and had been sort of falsely the triggered you can actually
train the algorithm to improve itself and ignore certain types of event and also notice it detected
you there gary as well you said you're here at eight o'clock this morning but somehow the camera
somehow suggests it was more like a quarter to nine you've caught me out yet again i'm talking
about the camera it's a 1080p camera and i think the range on it is about 20 minutes the detection
rate is about 20 meters you can obviously you can zoom in up to eight times digital zoom in on
the camera as well and that's again that's so we we've lived with it now for a couple of weeks and
it's been picking up some really some some great footage yeah another was a there was an image of
someone sweeping up at some point obviously we're not going to share that because that's just a myth
yeah a rumor in a myth the life in itself is rated at 12 watts led which is 120 watts in old
money yeah yeah in halogen terms yeah and again it's that feature that the the camera itself is
doing the switching so you don't necessarily need a pir and obviously we've got it set up
so it automatically switches on you can just leave it in an infrared mode yeah and a lot of cameras
have infrared and this one's quite visible actually which again is that other level of
visible deterrent and then you couple that with the siren that you can trigger
and i think that's a really powerful feature yeah that that startle people with the tsar and from
the remote uh triggering is really good well let's think about um the tapmo range now so
let's say i want to get more involved i can take on the pro installer yeah so this is obviously
geared up towards electricians yes and there's some advantages there obviously there's a great
training package that goes with it to get you comfortable with installing this stuff and it
you know we're we're in the early days of this you know we're learning this system as
well we've got a whole lot of other stuff behind us that we're going to plug through in the range
there's a dedicated phone line that you can phone up obviously to get advice and probably
you know that those early days those first few installs that can be quite important
and there's a separate life also for the customer to phone up as well so you don't end up running a
help desk for the customer you know there's loads of features in there that are for the
customer that probably they want to explore and once you've done that training you can be
registered on their website so people can visibly see that you're a local installer within your area
warrant is really important so become a pro installer i now get four year warranties at
correct gordon yeah it does so that extends their warranty from two years to four years
and obviously again there's a few pro installer programs around but not many of them have many
real advantages but that being able to offer an extended warranty because you've installed it
you know that again that's a tangible benefit that the customer can see and you've installed it and
i would suggest it was easy to install and we we commissioned it really easy lots of eases in here
so having the two-year warranty on top of the two-year warranty giving you four-year warranty
obviously is an added bonus to you being the installer so as always we're interested in your
comments have you fitted any of the range from an attack mode the ones behind us here what's your
feeling on those how did you find setting them up we'd love to hear those comments are you thinking
about fitting them in the future as you delve into the world of smart as always we're interested in
your feedback and your comments please leave them below and we'll get back to as many as we can