RING’S flying home drone could be launching soon after several years of teasing, according to reports.
The Always Home Cam was first announced in 2020 and was slated to hit shelves in 2021 – but it never landed.
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The gadget is the brainchild of recently returned Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff, who has been testing the indoor flying camera in his office, according to Business Insider.
Siminoff may be launching the device soon in “limited quantities”, according to sources.
Despite a 2021 launch that never really arrived, Ring showed off the flying security cam at CES in 2023.
The drone flies automatically around the home, with some obstacle avoidance technology so that it doesn’t crash into ceiling light or precious vase.
Once it has scouted the perimeter, it flies back into its compact cradle when it recharges.
Ring, owned by Amazon, touts the gadget as a way for privacy-hawkish homeowners to be “in two places at once”.
“Some indoor cameras just monitor the room. Ours can move around it when you’re away,” Ring says on the gadget’s product page.
“Left a window open or the stove on? Create flight paths ahead of time so you can manually check in with the Ring App from anywhere.”
The security device won’t be able to fly manually, work outside or zoom from one floor of the home to the other, according to Siminoff.
But you can give it predetermined routes around the home that it cannot stray from.
It can also only fly one floor at a time, and has a limited flight time of just five minutes on a single charge.
The idea is to scrap multiple plug in cameras around the home and have just one patrolling drone available.
“Instead of simply encouraging customers to buy more cameras and set them up in more locations around the home, how could we solve this problem with one solution?” Siminoff noted in a Ring blog post.
“We wanted to create one camera that could give users the flexibility of every viewpoint they want around the home, while delivering on our founding principles of privacy and security.”
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Siminoff, who founded Ring in 2013 before it was snapped up by Amazon, has reportedly been working on this drone concept for years – long before the acquisition.
However, parts were so expensive initially that the cam would have cost an eyewatering $2,000 to sell at retail.
But with the rise in autonomous vehicle technology, parts have become cheap enough to sell as a consumer product.
The Always Home Cam has been priced at $249.99 (£185.80).
Though some privacy campaigners say there’s no price they would pay to install a security drone in their own home.
Despite it only having a camera and no microphone, unlike Ring’s popular doorbells, critics argue that the very concept of a flying surveillance camera in the home is problematic.
“It’s difficult to imagine why Amazon thinks anyone wants flying internet cameras linked up to a data-gathering company in the privacy of their own home,” Silkie Carlo, of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, told the BBC when the gadget was first unveiled.
“It’s important to acknowledge the influence that Amazon’s product development is having on communities and the growing surveillance market.”
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