Apple recently dropped the price of the HomeKit-enabled D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD camera from $199.95 to $149.95 in the United States, a $50 discount off of the launch price. Apple's website doesn't mention a discount, suggesting the base price of the accessory has been lowered.
The price has also been lowered in Canada from $269.95 CAD to $199.95 CAD, and it's also been discounted in several other countries, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and more. It appears the price cut went live a few weeks ago.
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The D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD was the first camera to include support for HomeKit, but other products have been released since then, including Logitech's Circle 2.
The Omna is a quality in-home security camera with a wide angle lens, night vision support, and an accompanying app, but it records all content to a microSD card and does not include support for uploading to the cloud, a feature that may keep some users from wanting to buy it.
For a more complete picture of the D-Link Omna, make sure to check out our review.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Not really sure why you'd need a homekit enabled camera. The only point of homekit is to get siri to do stuff, the automation side of it is severly lacking and you'd be much better off using SmartThings to trigger reactions to motions
To have everything in one place.Not really sure why you'd need a homekit enabled camera. The only point of homekit is to get siri to do stuff, the automation side of it is severly lacking and you'd be much better off using SmartThings to trigger reactions to motions
It's all about standardization and security.Even if a vendor stops supporting the product (or goes out of business), HomeKit devices should continue to work (unless Apple updates the requirements to a point where older product will no longer comply), even if you uninstall the third party app.
While not always the case, HomeKit generally provides better security framework than third party.
And a nice side benefit is integration. A HomeKit device will respond to Home app and Siri's commands, as well as work with other HomeKit devices though automation rules.
Not really sure why you'd need a homekit enabled camera. The only point of homekit is to get siri to do stuff, the automation side of it is severly lacking and you'd be much better off using SmartThings to trigger reactions to motions
iOS 11 has already addressed the automation shortcomings.I mean, it's better than iOS 10 but... there's lots of room to improve. Why aren't temperature sensors a valid "sensor"? I'd sure love to have my window fan turn on when the temp upstairs hits, say 75 - seems super simple, yet there's no way in home to do that yet - at least that I can find. Simple stuff like this just seems to be a no brainer yet it's still missing.
This is an issue of the default Home app, not the HomeKit framework. You can, in fact, have the temperature as a valid trigger for automation in HomeKit even under iOS 10, but you need a separate app like Elgato Eve to program it first. Apple needs to beef up the Home app to take advantage of all that HomeKit offers.I love home kit and have spent way too much money on it, but man there's LOTS of room for improvement still, even once iOS 11 ships. Sadly.
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The Omna is a quality in-home security camera with a wide angle lens, night vision support, and an accompanying app, but it records all content to a microSD card and does not include support for uploading to the cloud, a feature that may keep some users from wanting to buy it.
The thing is, some people actually WANT it this way because they don't trust a 3rd party cloud storage. I personally think both options should be available.Logitech Circle 2 goes the full opposite direction by having no local storage and the MR article reporting on that understandably had people complaining about this.