12
HOTTEST HOME KIT
In the olden days, you only really had one
option if you wanted something to keep
an eye on your home when you were out:
a guard dog. But while patrolling hounds
might be good at barking and baring their
fangs, they’re also prone to being distracted
by strings of sausages... which isn’t
something you can say about Arlo’s
Essential Indoor Camera.
While it might not have any teeth to gnash,
it does have a siren, which you can trigger
from your phone if the 1080p night-vision
camera spots an intruder in your pad when
nobody’s home. It can tell the difference
between people and pets, so unless the
local burglars have trained a spaniel to swipe
laptops it’ll only alert you when there’s a
genuine intruder – although with two-way
audio you could always try offering
sausages to them as well.
It’ll hook up with your phone’s GPS to
automatically activate or deactivate
depending on whether you’re home,
but if you’re paranoid about being spied
on there’s also a lens shield that you can
flick across. That way there’s no chance
anyone will see your pre-lunch fridge raids.
As hot as... stolen chipolatas
£120 / arlo.comALSATIAN’S
COUSIN
Arlo Essential
Indoor CameraHoarder
collie
You’ll need to pay for Arlo’s
smart security plan (£2.
a month) if you want to store
recordings in the cloud. This
is also needed to unlock
the animal-detection
feature.THE HANDY
MAID’S TALE
Samsung Bot Handy
If you thought employing a Roomba to
snaffle crumbs around your house like
a real-life Pac-Man was the closest
you were going to get to a robot butler,
get a load of Samsung’s Bot Handy: a
one-armed Chore-o-Tron that Samsung
claims can do pretty much everything
except wipe your backside... and we’re
surprised it won’t do that, considering the
name. Perhaps it’s shy.
Looking not unlike the offspring of Short
Circuit’s Johnny 5 and EVE from Wall-E,
the Bot Handy trundles around your gaff
using cameras on its head and arm to spot
objects and AI skills to identify them before
putting its moving parts into action. So it’ll
be able to deal with items of varying sizes,
shapes and weights without accidentally
crushing them to bits.
The Bot Handy is very much ‘in
development’ at the moment, so there’s
no word on exactly when it’ll be available,
how much it will cost, or whether you’ll
have to buy it a birthday cake every year;
but the idea is it’ll be able to tidy up toys,
load the dishwasher and then bring you
a nice relaxing glass of sherry. Better up
your game, Roomba.
As hot as... Johnny 5’s dance moves
£tba / samsung.com