D-Link Omna 180
APPLE’S HOMEKIT GETS A BOOST FROM ITS FIRST COMPATIBLE CAMERA.
D-LINK’S OMNA IS the first camera we’ve seen that works with the HomeKit platform and the Home app in iOS 10. The camera boasts a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and a very effective 180° wide-angle lens. It also includes an infrared night-vision mode, and a motion sensor that can send alerts if it detects movement. It can stream live video to iOS devices, but there’s no option for online storage, so if you want to store recordings, you’ll have to buy a microSD card.
It took us a couple of attempts to get the camera set up properly; we couldn’t initially connect the Omna app to the camera when using an iPad but it worked fine when we switched to an iPhone. The app works on its own, allowing you to view live video from the camera, record onto a memory card, and to adjust features such as the sensitivity of the motion sensor. However, the Omna also shows up inside the Home app in iOS 10, showing both the image from the camera, and the motion sensor, which is listed as a separate device. That allowed us to create an ‘automation’ within the Home app that linked the camera to our Philips Hue lights, so that the motion sensor would automatically turn on the lights when we walked into the room. The one drawback in this case is that you need either a fourth-gen Apple TV or an iPad to act as a control hub.
There are plenty of more affordable cameras available that rely on their own apps to monitor your home and send alerts, so a HomeKit camera such as the Omna isn’t essential. But if you own other HomeKit devices, such as the Hue lights or Netatmo’s forthcoming Smoke Alarm, then it might be worth spending a little extra on the Omna so that you can link all of your smart devices together for a truly smart home.