For all things home automated, there are some really interesting and great looking products out there that are starting to make their way into the hands of consumers. We have smart thermostats, smart appliances like washers and dryers, smart refrigerators, smart connected lighting, smart fans from our friends at Big Ass Fans, and smart hubs to keep everything linked and seamlessly manageable. Let’s not forget about smart… doorbells? Yep, the folks over at Skybell have developed a smart connected doorbell(they just released the 2.0 version)that lets you interact with the people at your door in a whole new way. Something like this certainly catches my own personal interest as I now currently live in a place with no peephole, which is how we usually see who is on the other side knocking.
With Skybell 2.0, a product that was first introduced in August of 2013 through the companies indigogo campaign, you can use your smartphone or tablet to connect to the unit and see who is at the door via the embedded WiFi camera, and even talk to them using the built-in intercom. If this isn’t cool, I don’t know what is. Not only does the doorbell have an intercom and a camera connected your home local network, but it’s also night vision enabled and has a 140 degree field of view so you can catch pretty much anything in front of the door. That means no more surprises when your in-laws come to town. There are a few caveats to making something like the Skybell 2.0 work, as you could imagine you’ll need a WiFi router with a supported connection speed, something that is at least 2.4GHz 80.11 b/g/n. You also need internet speeds of at least 1mbps down and 1.5mbps up, which shouldn’t be a problem for most people these days.
The Skybell 2.0 is also compatible with Android 2.0 and above making it fairly versatile and useable with just about Any Android device, as well as iOS 6.1 forward. You can grab the Skybell 2.0 units on Amazon right now for just shy of $200($199 to be exact)and it comes in two different colors, either a brushed aluminum or an oil-rubbed bronze finish. To be honest, both colors look really good. Would you use something like this in your own home?
