It’s brighter than I think most people would want to put in a bedroom. The one aspect of the design that I’m not enamored with is the status LED, which in standby mode is a bright white line of LED lights hidden behind the fabric base. Before long, it had mostly faded into the background of the room, though not quite as completely as the slightly smaller, all-black Canary Pro. The design helps mask the height of the device, and despite the white base, I grew used to seeing it sitting on a bookshelf in our home quickly. The bottom half has a white fabric covering, and the top half is black glossy plastic. The exterior of the iota hub is two-tone. The iota hub is just a little taller than a Canary Pro or View unit. That’s a lot packed into a relatively small package. The unit houses the camera, 93 dB siren, motion sensor, microphone, battery backup for handling power outages, and a 4G SIM slot for backup communications if WiFi or Ethernet isn’t available. If you’ve ever seen Canary’s Pro or View cameras, the iota hub has roughly the same footprint but is a little more than an inch (2.5 cm) taller. It also acts as a hub for controlling other devices, like the door sensor and key fob for arming the system that come with the starter kit. The iota system’s main unit has a built-in 1080p video camera and siren. There are also a couple of different starter kits available, one of which is the iota, which I’ve been testing. The company’s product lineup includes door, window, motion, occupancy, leak, and smoke sensors, along with a variety of indoor and outdoor cameras, sirens, and other accessories. The company offers far more than just video cameras. The abode iota Security System’s HardwareĪbode has nearly all the features its competitors have and more. The convenience of quickly checking whether a package has been left at my front door and checking on the interior and exterior of my house when I’m away with Home and HomeCam is something I’m not willing to give up. I haven’t tried Nest or Ring cameras because I don’t want to go back to a system that doesn’t support HomeKit. The trouble is, though, Logitech’s cameras do not include a siren, and the company doesn’t offer any sort of system monitoring. Also, despite some early issues, I like that the cameras use Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video storage feature, which uses iCloud Drive to save recorded clips, because I have spare storage in iCloud Drive for which I already pay. I like that they are HomeKit cameras that work with Apple’s Home app and third-party apps like Aaron Pearce’s excellent HomeCam. My next stop was to try Logitech’s Circle 2 cameras. Coupled with poor battery life for their outdoor cameras, I started to look at alternatives again. Canary replaced them, but my confidence in the product was shaken. At first, that was fine, but two of my four cameras stopped working in short order for no apparent reason. It started with Canary, whose cameras don’t support HomeKit. ![]() ![]() I haven’t had a lot of luck with smart security systems. Still, even as is, the combination of abode’s hardware and the services offer a flexibility that other systems I’ve tried just can’t match. The iOS app doesn’t match the quality of abode’s hardware, but the issues with the app are mitigated by a solid web app and HomeKit compatibility that provide alternative ways to control the system. ![]() After several weeks with the kit, which is available in the US and Canada, I’ve been impressed with both the reliability and flexibility of the hardware. That’s why I was interested in trying abode’s HomeKit-compatible iota Security Kit when they offered to send me a test unit. ![]() The products I’ve tried in the past have been plagued by unreliable hardware and limited functionality. I ditched that system about two years ago in hopes of finding a cheaper, smarter solution, but I’ve had mixed success. For years, I had a traditional security system in my home that cost hundreds of dollars each year for the monitoring service that went with it.
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