Sens8 – Backerjack

The Mercu smart home orb falls short of groundbreaking

On any given day, another product promising to be the center of the connected home experience makes its way to the crowdfunding world. Most of the time, they suffer from lack of connectivity and features, forcing users to combine them with accessories to truly get the most out of them.

With the Mercu, Taiwan-based GalaThings promises an all-in-one product combining surveillance capabilities, sound and motion detection for intruders (and a siren to scare them off), and environmental detection keeping tabs on humidity, temperature, luminance, and smoke. In addition to these features, three other aspects of the Mercu make it particularly useful: Wi-Fi, ZigBee and BLE support, the option to save pertinent video locally with its SD card slot or on cloud storage with Dropbox integration, and an IFTTT interface on its companion smartphone to create custom events.

The SENS8 is aware of your abode so you don’t need to be

The internet of things is all about securing the home. Every week, some newfangled security system starts a crowdfunding run sometimes peddling new features, sometimes not. In the end, the urge to want to keep a family safe usually wins out despite lack of innovation.

Sometimes, innovation isn’t needed, but rather a solid design, slightly tweaked and offered at the right price. The SENS8 is that product: It’s an all-in-one solution designed to protect the home through its combination of high-quality 1080p-capable HD camera and set of sensors. Together with its motion detector and 95dB speaker and alarm, users are alerted to break-ins and other mischievous behavior with the constantly recording device coupled with a siren to deter intruders. Or, users can use the speaker to engage in two-way conversation.