British smart home brand, Earzz is launching its first ever product today: the Earzz Smart Home Monitor. A sound recognition device, this new smart home monitor is designed to alert you to important sounds around your home without invading your household’s privacy.
Almost every house around the world has a scattering of smart devices or a full smart home ecosystem. While most gadgets on offer protect your security like the best security camera or streamline the inner workings of your home like the best smart thermostats, this new launch from Earzz is all about monitoring and detection.
The Earzz Smart Home Monitor constantly monitors the sounds around your home, allowing you to stay connected to what’s going on while you’re away. With the accompanying app, the Earzz Smart Home Monitor notifies you of the noises that you’ve chosen to hear, like your baby crying, cars pulling up to your house or running water.
The idea behind the Earzz Smart Home Monitor came from Prad Thiruvenkatanathan, founder of Earzz. “I had nine different monitors in my home including a baby monitor, a smart doorbell, a pet monitor, and even a glass break monitor for security. Each was single-purpose, expensive, and… I noticed there were no monitors that could listen for a variety of sounds, especially the sounds I wanted.”
After developing the product and with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Earzz Smart Home Monitor is finally being launched as an all-in-one cost-effective monitoring device. So, let’s look at the Earzz Smart Home Monitor a bit closer.
This sound recognition sensor is designed to listen into the sounds around your home, and identify any abnormalities. Depending on what you want to hear, Earzz will inform you using its ever growing sound library. Examples of sounds that can trigger the Earzz Smart Home Monitor include child sounds like crying or coughing, pet noises like barking or meowing, knocking, doorbells, running water, alarms, appliance beeps and more.
To set up the Earzz Smart Home Monitor, all you have to do is place it in the area of your home that you want to monitor. The device comes with a built-in rechargeable battery which can work wirelessly for up to 8 hours, or you can plug it into the mains permanently. Once you’ve sorted the location, you can configure the Earzz Smart Home Monitor with the Earzz app (available on iOS and Android) to set up what you want the device to listen to.
On to the big question: could the Earzz Smart Home Monitor be seen as a little invasive? What puts most people off of using smart devices like the best smart speakers is that they worry it’s constantly listening into and recording their conversations. While the Earzz Smart Home Monitor does use its technology to listen to your home and identify sounds, the brand uses secure cloud infrastructure to ensure privacy and security. It also has encrypted communication controls, and Earzz never stores your sound files.
Who would benefit from the Earzz Smart Home Monitor, I hear you ask? Anyone who wants to keep track of what’s going on in their home can find a place for it, but new parents, pet owners and people who are hard of hearing “would benefit from the empowerment of virtual ears.”
The Earzz Smart Home Monitor launches today in the UK with prices starting at £7.99 a month for an annual subscription with the first monitor offered free.
