Amazon makes tablets, eReaders, media streamers, and a line of smart speakers. Soon the online retailer may add a home security camera to its hardware lineup.

AFTVNews spotted a picture of an unannounced Amazon-branded gadget hiding on Amazon’s website, and it sure looks like it could be the company’s answer to connected cameras including Google’s Nest Cam.

Update: It turns out this isn’t a security camera. It’s a $200 gadget called Amazon Echo Look, and it’s designed to offer all the features of an Amazon Echo plus a camera that can snap photos, shoot videos, and use “Style Check” features to suggest fashion choices, among other things.

There’s no information about the price, launch date, or specs for this unannounced camera. But it does have a few design elements that are reminiscent of Amazon’s Echo products, including a circle around the camera lens that looks like an Echo light ring. There are also two microphones visible at the top of the device.

Maybe that means the camera will support Amazon’s Alexa voice service, or maybe the blue ring is just a visual design feature and the mics are just for recording audio to go with your home security videos or allow you to use the system as an intercom to talk to people observing a video feed in real-time (like an in-home intercom system, or a pet-tracking system for keeping an eye on your furry friends while you’re at the office).

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4 replies on “Amazon home security cam (or something) leaked”

  1. Who would have ever thought Amazon would be the company to win the Home Automation IoT market, but that certainly seems to be the way it’s going. Poor Google & Apple are so far behind.

    1. I can’t agree. Amazon doesn’t actually have any home automation IoT products of its own beyond Alexa. That is proving very popular.

      Google owns Nest – which does have IoT product and has been in that market and popular for a while. Assistant from Google doesn’t have the primary third party support of Alexa yet but it’s only several months old while Alexa has been around for a couple years.

      Meanwhile through some smart platform support out of the gate via Smartthings and IFTTT there is actually a fairly short list of third party devices you can’t control via Assistant already. And direct third party support is showing up too.
      Apple – it is odd how slow they have been to get their own platform going and how little steam it has had.

      Google though is on the verge of bringing Assistant to all Android 6 and newer devices. They are also bringing their chat app Allo to non-phone platforms including desktop web browser. That’s important since Assistant is available through Allo. It will also be on Android Wear 2.0 devices and shortly on Android TV devices.

      If Google gives full home IoT control to all instances of Assistant then Amazon is about to be hit with a tidal wave of devices which run Assistant. An install base that will obliterate any lead in end point devices running Alexa which Amazon currently enjoys.
      So sure Amazon is a strong player and has really put weight behind their first mover advantage. But no I would not say Google is ‘so far behind’ at all.

      It’s clear Google is going to be a major player. And Amazon will probably stay a major player. I’d think Apple will start scrambling to get in the game soon as they should/must realize what is at stake long term. Microsoft is the one who seems to be really missing the plot. That’s remarkable considering their performance with mobile and what a horror story that’s been for them already. They have Cortanta of course but just foisting it on every Windows install isn’t going to be enough in the long run.

  2. That would be great. I’d love to see some bog player give real competition to Nestcam in regard to pricing. I really don’t need 10 days @ $10/month. I’d be happy to go 1 day @ $1/month though.
    What I really want is access to the better features of course too. And I’d be happy to pay something like $25/year or less for that 1 day retention I mentioned
    $100/year for one camera seems a bit steep as a base price.
    Hopefully Amazon would be competing in features as well as just storage.

    1. Xiaomi is flogging their Cloud service now, but unless you need the storage to be offsite, the Yi home cams store clips on a local SD card, and their cheap version is $40. I have two, and they work fine (there’s also a small modding community for them, as they can have their firmware tweaked via conf files from the SD card).

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