Survey your kingdom (without a monthly bill) using the Piper home-security system

It used to be that outfitting your home with a security system meant contacting a security agency like Brinks or ADT, installing sensors all over your house, and paying a monthly fee to keep your service going.But now that sensor tech has become drastically cheaper than it used to be, cheap DIY home surveillance systems are starting to pop up, and Piper is one of the first to hit the market.

Just a few short months ago, Piper was nothing more than ahopeful IndieGoGo project, but Blacksumac has been charging forward at blistering pace since then, and a couple months ago started shipping to consumers. We got our hands on one and played with it for a few weeks to determine if its really a viable alternative to traditional home security systems. Heres what we thought:

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One of Pipers biggest selling points is ease of use. Unlike traditional security/surveillance systems, Blacksumac promises that this little box promises doesnt require any sort of complicated installation process and it definitely lives up to that promise. To get started, you literally just plug it in, download the app on your phone, and follow directions. It starts by turning Piper into its own Wi-Fi hotspot, which you log on to. After that, youre prompted to enter in the name of the Wi-Fi network youd actually like to connect to, followed by the password. At this point, it makes you wait a little bit while it configures itself, but if everything goes smoothly, youll have your new security system set up in about 7 to 10 minutes. All in all, setup is pretty painless.

Insofar as the exterior design, we have mixed feelings. Its aesthetically pleasing, but its also clearly a security camera, which could potentially cause problems. In terms of build quality, however, its pretty solid. Its fairly lightweight, which makes it easy to mount, but also heavy enough that it sits firmly in its stand and wont tip over easily.

The physical design is decent, but where Piper really shines is its digital design. Blacksumacs app design team absolutely nailed it here. Pipers iOS/Android app is easy, intuitive, and has practically no learning curve. The main dashboard gives you four separate modes: Off, Away, Vacation, and a setting called Stay for when youre home sleeping, but still want the system to be armed. These four settings are basically just customizable presets that you can assign different rules to like record a video when a loud noise is detected in Away mode, for example, or sound the alarm when a motion is detected in Vacation mode. This logical interface makes Piper a breeze to use.

180 degree camera

This is arguably the coolest feature on the device. Depending on where you place Piper, the cameras super wide field of view allows you to surveil a large area of your home, and in many cases eliminates the need for multiple cameras to be positioned throughout a given room. Its also equipped with a digital pan/zoom function, so you can zoom into the room and pan around without actually changing the position of the device. BlackSumacs website claims the video is HD, and it may very well be recording in HD, but if you tap into a live video stream, dont expect it to look super crisp. Even on the two blazing-fast Wi-Fi networks we tried it on, the footage came up a bit grainy and slow on our phones but not to the point where it was unusable. On the plus, side, however, we found that playback was only a second or two behind real time, even on a crappy 3G connection.

In addition to using it for live video surveillance, you can also set up Piper to record video whenever certain sensors are tripped. Once activated, Piper will record a 20-second clip, and automatically saves it to the cloud so even if an intruder breaks in and steals the camera, youll still have access to the footage. Its a smart setup, and could definitely come in handy if you should ever need to use the footage is any sort of legal proceeding but unfortunately the app doesnt offer any way to export these videos, so the only way you can access them is through your phone.

Motion detection and more

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Survey your kingdom (without a monthly bill) using the Piper home-security system