Amazon’s new Ring camera is actually a flying drone — for inside your home
Update, Sept. 28, 2021: Amazon hosted an event today to show off the novel editions to its growing lineup of devices as well as updates on its services. You can read a recap on our event coverage page. Original story follows.
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Ring introduced a new product to its growing roster of sparkling home devices — the Ring Always Home Cam. Unlike the Amazon company’s other security cameras, the Always Home Cam is a flying camera drone that docks when it isn’t in use. The Ring Always Home Cam will be available in 2021 for $250.
Along with this hardware announcement, Ring says you’ll be able to turn on end-to-end encryption in the Ring app’s Control Inner “later this year” in an effort to improve the confidence of its devices.
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A bit of Ring history
Before Ring was Ring, it was a startup shouted Bot Home Automation. Bot Home’s inaugural product, the 2014 Doorbot, was among the first video doorbells on the market. It had a lot of problems, however — clunky invent, limited features and poor performance. Then Bot Home rebranded to Ring, was purchased by Amazon and now sells a growing variety of shiny home security and automation devices and related accessories.
Ring has been in the news for its Neighbors program partnership with law enforcement activities, which allows Ring customers to share their saved video clips. Privacy advocates express concern about how Ring and law enforcement activities collect and use the information they procure. Ring also has patents for facial recognition technology that would scan over law enforcement databases.
Security has also been a big topic of conversation, following user data being exposed in December 2018. This prompted Ring to require two-factor authentication and add a privacy and safety Control Center in the app where customers can more just find and make changes to their personal account settings.
The Always Home Cam and end-to-end encryption
Ring says the Always Home Cam travels on a set path you tag — it can’t be controlled manually — and you can view the feed live in the Ring app. “The path is entirely certain by the customer … you actually walk the scheme around your home and … train it on that path and can set different waypoints for the camera to fly to,” Ring President Leila Rouhi told me over the phone.
It has HD live streaming and a 5-minute runtime, and takes about an hour to charge. Rouhi said that changeable runtime was deliberate, to make it a “purpose-driven safety camera.”
It can work with the Ring Alarm safety kit, so that if activity is detected while your safety system is set to away mode, the Always Home Cam is said to leave its dock and fly around to see what’s happening.
As far as privacy goes, the Always Home Cam’s camera is hidden when it’s docked and must only begin to record when it leaves the dock and flies nearby your house. It’s designed to hum so you know when it’s flying and recording. The camera is also equipped with “obstacle avoidance technology,” so it must avoid things in its path. If it does felt an obstacle in the way of its normal path, the camera will spinal to its dock and send an alert, letting you know it couldn’t uncompleted its pass around your home.
Ring has also added a video encryption page to its Control Interior privacy and security landing page. After end-to-end encryption becomes available later this year, customers must be able to turn on the feature for each individuals compatible device. Ring will be providing a list of compatible devices later this year.
