New Home Awareness System Encorporates Drone and Smart Lights

New Home Awareness System Encorporates Drone and Smart Lights

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

A system of smart lights communicating with a a camera-equipped quadcopter drone will help secure homes and even call law enforcement forces.

Sunflower Labs are working on smart lights that will have sensors built-in to communicate with an autonomous drone that will then fly to take a video of any suspicious activity. Whenever there’s uncommon activity identified by the smart lights, the quadcopter flies to where the action is, to capture video and transmit it to the cloud. The users get notifications via a mobile app when there’s activity detected on their property, according to the company’s website.

Alex Pachikov, Sunflower Labs’ founder and CEO, told SecuritySystemsNews.com: “We want to build a system that is primarily concerned with outdoors, and the surroundings of your property”.

Camera systems sometimes need a large number of cameras and intensive wiring, he pointed out. “That’s why we thought a flying camera is the future of security in general; you always get the best vantage points when the camera is in the air.”

The drones will initially navigate using a three-dimensional model of the user’s house, and a map that covers which areas are safe to fly over, Pachikov said, “We’re assuming that you’re not going to add a story to your house overnight and trees aren’t going to double overnight.” The drones will also have collision detection systems, in case information becomes misinterpreted or a ladder is left against the side of the house, he said.

The solar-powered smart lights, which feed the drone information, have three different types of sensors: motion sensors, vibration sensors that will be put into the ground, and a microphone. They will also have a speaker “to be able to either give a warning to someone who’s on your property and shouldn’t be, or to be able to scare away animals.” The smart lights system will have its own app for information and setup, which includes the ability to call law enforcement.

The company intends to run a beta program of the drones with hundreds of users across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The company launched a site for reservations in early November. The timeframe for release of the drones is to be determined, based on the results of the public beta test.

How is the company addressing existing or pending drone regulations? “We are currently in discussion with people on the commission established by the FAA that makes recommendations on drone regulations,” Pachikov said. “We have been impressed with the FAA’s pace on issuing new regulations and being open to supporting innovation in the field. Specifically, we are encouraged by the progress that companies such as Amazon, DJI and GoPro have been making with the regard to autonomous flight”.