An article published Thursday on the official Nest blog unveiled a new update for their mobile app. The upgrade will integrate users’ home camera feeds with Android TV (already available), and Apple TV (coming soon). This feature will allow them to control those feeds from their flatscreens.
The article also showed how users could make ‘instaclips’ with their Nest cameras, to share their holiday celebrations with friends and family via the app in a matter of seconds. Nest is a home & design company that makes high-performance HD cameras for indoor and outdoor surveillance.
The cameras respond to voice commands and have motion detection, among other features. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, recently acquired them in a move to expand its reach to the home technology department.
Nest products also include a smart thermostat and smoke alarm. The Nest indoor camera starts at $175.20.
Nest Labs focuses on app integration for homes, or as Nest calls it, Connected Home Space. Image Source:
Nest introduces ‘instaclips’ for their Nest Aware subscription
Nest also allows users to subscribe to a service called Nest Aware, which gives them better camera alerts and increases their devices features. Nest Aware grants users advanced activity detection in all of their devices, the ability to set Activity Zones around the house, and cloud storage for video feeds.
Nest Aware subscribers can now record short videos with their outdoor or indoor cameras as well. When users open the Nest app to see the video feeds that come from their Nest cameras, they will now see a video icon on the right side that they can press to record ‘instaclips.’
The user needs not to set any beginning or ending time for the clip, as the Nest app automatically registers the period of activity and sets the duration of the video. But if users want to personalize this particular feature, they can do so by pressing down and holding the video icon.
Sharing instaclips with friends and family
After creating the clip, the video is automatically saved to the user’s Nest Account and an options menu pops out at the bottom. Users can save the video to their Camera Roll (or Gallery), or create a link to share it wherever they want.
The Nest app usually sends snapshots from the camera feeds whenever an activity alert goes off, and they use to send them only to Android users. Starting today, with this new update, iPhone users will also receive snapshots on their phones and if they are subscribed to Nest Aware, they will also receive a short video of what’s going on.
Source: Nest