Smart home security cameras are nothing new, they're able to detect motion inside or outside your home and send you a notification. The new Lighthouse security wants to take that further by intelligently recognising different people and even pets, using 3D-sensing technology.

The project has been backed by Android co-founder Andy Rubin, so it really does mean business. You can set up commands to send to the camera, such as asking it to let you know when the kids get home from school. The camera will then recognise the kids when they walk through the door - it uses facial recognition to store images of each family member - and send you an image as proof.

To set up these kind of commands is simple too, as the Lighthouse camera can understand natural language. It means you can literally say "tell me when the kids are home from school", and it will understand.

The Lighthouse camera can even identify pets, so you can ask the companion app to let you know if the dog went outside while you were away, and you'll get all dog-related activity, specifically near the door, for the day.

And if the camera detects movement from an unidentified person, it will let you know through the app and gives you quick-access options to sound a siren, call the police or to talk through the camera to politely tell the intruder to go away.

As with some other home security cameras, you can also talk through the Lighthouse camera using the app. It will even recognise hand gestures, so your kids could wave to it to get your attention, you'll get a notification on the app and then you can speak to them to ask them how their day was. Of course, this is only really useful if you're away from the home, and not just sitting in the other room.

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Lighthouse

Lighthouse says all camera footage and data stored on the camera is encrypted, and footage is automatically deleted after 30 days.

You can now pre-order the Lighthouse security camera in the US for $399 with a year of Lighthouse Intelligence software, but you can increase this to four years for $499 or five years for $599. Once your subscription has run out, you can pay $10/month to keep it running.