Hearing is believing.
If you have a home
security system, be it traditional or smart, the chances are that it
uses window and door contact sensors and motion sensors and cameras
to keep you safe. As we've discovered in the past, getting all that
kit installed into your home can be a faff – which is why Cocoon
really caught out eye. We check it out.
Cocoon is but a single
device, the same size as a cricket ball. As the website suggests, one
device is all you need to monitor the coming and goings of your
entire house, as it uses the way the air moves throughout your home
to detect changes. In reality, the gadget itself combines a 1080p HD
camera and ultra-sensitive microphone together with some clever AI
programming.
In essence, the Cocoon
sits in your home and broadcasts what the camera and microphone
detect to a smartphone app (iOS and Android), allowing you to check
in from wherever you are in the world. BIG DEAL, right? But how
Cocoon differs from other smart security cameras is in the way it
'learns' how you live and what happens in your house on certain days.
By doing so, it reduces the number of false alarm alerts.
For example, if you get
up at around 7am each morning, the Cocoon will learn that an increase
in activity around that time is normal. It will also learn to take
into account regular changes like weekends, when you might get up and
go to bed later. If you have a cleaner come into your house on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, it will learn to expect that too, and not
issue alerts to your phone when activity is detected around those
times. However, all this means that for the first couple of weeks or
so, Cocoon will be a little nervous about the things going on around
it, having not yet learnt what regular events to expect.
At time of writing,
we've had the Cocoon set up in Test Pit Towers for about three weeks.
It is only in the past few days that everything has calmed down and
the AI knows what goes on around here. Prior to that, we have had a
few notifications pop up saying there was unusual activity taking
place... while someone we knew was in. To be fair to it, they are
rather usual people, even at the best of times.
This is all monitored
by Subsound technology, a level of sound sensitivity that our rubbish
human hearing can't perceive. So if you pop home at lunch time
unexpectedly and try to tiptoe into the house, attempting to sneak by
the Cocoon, it will have probably detected your presence as you were
walking down the drive. It is that sensitive, and although we were a
little dubious about the 'one device' security claims, it seems to be
true; just one of these things can monitor an average sized home.
On that note – and
quite unlike other security systems – Cocoon will arm the moment
you (or rather your phone) leaves the house, and disarm when you get
back. This is a brilliant God-send, and means that you never have to
worry about physically arming it in the app. It also means you never
really have to think about the Cocoon itself, unless you get an alert
or if you want to look back over the cloud-stored footage. It's just
there, doing the job. We think is pretty cool.
£159.99