For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Flir to give away a Flir FX Wi-Fi Home Monitoring Camera and a weatherproof housing accessory that lets the Flir FX be used outdoors.
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Positioned as a competitor to products like the Nest Cam and the Logi Circle, the Flir FX is a compact home surveillance camera that's useful for keeping an eye on what's going on at home when you're not there. The Flir FX consists of a palm-sized wide-angle camera with a resolution of 1920 x 1080p, auto motion detection, Wi-Fi connectivity, and night vision.
Flir FX comes with a mount (and an optional outdoor housing) that lets it be positioned anywhere in the home -- I've got one on a desk that monitors my kitchen, front door, hallway, and a portion of my living room. It can run on battery four hours on the stand, so it can also move from room to room or work as a GoPro-style camera in a pinch, which is handy. Another neat feature: it can let you know the humidity and the temperature of the room it's in and alert you if there are significant changes.
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While great for making sure a home is safe from intruders, the Flir FX is also useful for keeping an eye on pets and kids with its two-way microphone and automatic recording based on motion. Image quality is crisp overall, but low-light capture can be a bit dark at times. At night, the night vision feature records movement up to 30 feet away and gives a clear picture of activity.
Flir FX ships with an 8GB microSD card (upgradeable), so video can be captured and viewed locally, which is a major plus. There's also a Flir Cloud feature for viewing streaming video on the Flir FX iOS app when you're away from home. Basic connectivity, with two days of unlimited cloud storage, is free, but up to 30 days of storage is available for $19.95 per month, which is pretty pricy. I was mostly satisfied with the free tier because video can be exported and saved locally, but the more expensive tiers have perks that enhance some of the app abilities like daily recaps.
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With the Flir FX iOS app, there are some nifty things you can do with the camera. The Flir FX works by sensing motion, and in the app, you can set SmartZones for it to monitor. I don't want to get an alert every time someone moves in the living room, for example, but I do want to know when someone comes in the front door. Detailed settings for motion capture are also available, including sensitivity adjustments movement and noise, and there's an option to turn on continuous recording to the microSD card.
I'm not a huge fan of the Flir FX app's interface, its slow loading speed, or the occasional delayed movement notifications I get, but I do like what it can do. The Flir FX app takes quick one minute videos whenever motion is detected, and sends an alert. It can also take snapshots and it has a list of all the manual recordings I've created on the microSD card. My favorite feature, by far, is the "RapidRecap," which aggregates all of the movement captured during the day into a single video with timestamped overlapping objects. It's a neat way to go through a ton of footage and see everything that happened in a day.
The Flir FX can be purchased directly from Flir for $199, but one lucky MacRumors reader will get a camera and an outdoor housing as part of our giveaway. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize.
You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.
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