We recently rounded up 12 of the best home-security devices you can buy.
One you won’t find on that list: GuardMyPad.
That’s because it’s a free security system. Also it’s new. But back to it being free. How exactly do they manage that? By repurposing devices you already own.
Most of the gadgets lying around the average home — laptops, tablets and phones — feature sophisticated cameras and microphones, which GuardMyPad takes advantage of. Once connected, the platform gives you access to most of the functions of your standard surveillance-specific products, such as motion and audio detection, remote live streams, photo and video capture, and alarm triggers.
Also, as a free service, the captured media can be stored anywhere you like, whether that be in their private cloud storage or yours, or directly on your devices.
Basically, any device with a camera and Chrome can be turned into a security camera. But that’s where the first caveat comes in: iOS devices are not fully supported yet. Fortunately, as of publishing this story, the platform is only in beta testing and will eventually support the iPhone/iPad contingent.
The second caveat? The creators themselves write that, at least in this introductory phase, “GuardMyPad is intended to be a ‘better than nothing’ security and monitoring solution. We do not offer guarantees around uptime.” In other words, you can’t hold them accountable if their systems go down.
If better than nothing is good enough for you, give it a go. But if you take your security more seriously, we have some suggestions.
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