Yves Béhar takes Hive outdoors with a new home security camera

The 360-degree smart home hub by Hive has gone 480 with a new outdoor camera addition to its home technology collection. The launch of Hive View Outdoor marks the first time the UK-based smart home company has branched out into outdoor security, having been known in the past for its interconnected smart heating systems, sensors, lights, and indoor cameras.

The new Hive View Outdoor, announced today and available from December 2018, sends a notification to your smartphone when it detects motion, sound or people, helping you monitor the outside of your home, whether you're in it, or not.

The new camera continues Hive's longstanding design collaboration with Yves Béhar and his firm, fuseproject. Clearly from the same aesthetic home as the original Hive View, the outdoor iteration comes with a newly designed detachable mount secured by magnets – allowing you to pick up and move the camera without having to uninstall it, the work of half-an-afternoon (or moments, if you chose to have it installed for you at extra cost).

The Hive View Outdoor has all the anthropomorphic Wall-E-esque qualities of the Hive View original – clean lines, pebble-like smoothness – without the interior-savvy champagne gold and brushed bronze finishes available on the indoor products. Instead, the petite, weatherproof white box discreetly monitors your outside areas; just visible enough to act as a deterrent.

Those already on the Hive train will be pleased to know that the Outdoor camera auto-links to the existing Hive app (famed for its usability and stylish UX design) along with the existing suite of products. You get a notification when your camera detects something – it’ll even send a head and shoulders thumbnail image to your smartphone when a person is detected. You can also set schedules so you’re only notified when you want to be (not when the binman comes). The mail carrier, you may wish to talk to, however; and now you can tell them where to leave your delivery from wherever you are in the world thanks to the smart doorbell feature, which allows you to speak to whoever's at the door with a touch of a button.

For an extra layer of security, link your camera to your Hive Lights in the app so they turn on the moment there’s motion outside, or (a fun addition) play a siren or dog barking sound as soon as motion is detected to scare intruders off once and for all.

INFORMATION
Launching globally from early December, available for pre-order now. For more information, visit the Hive website (opens in new tab) and the fuseproject website (opens in new tab)