Makers of the Flir Thermal Camera for smartphones, the company has just announced it’s new Flir FX, a wireless home monitoring camera that can double as an action cam, much like the GoPro. The Flir FX also works as an outdoor security system or a dash cam for your car, all depending on the available cases the camera can be inserted to, which provides the appropriate camera application. The thought behind the Flir FX is essentially one camera that can be housed in various cases to perform different uses.
Flir FX Features
Flir has always been in the business of high-end military camera systems, so they’re no novice to security or cameras. They also make the Lorex brand of security cameras. But with the FX, you get a modular camera with 1080p resolution, 160-degree viewing angle, and 802.11 b/g/n home Wi-Fi onboard to stream video up into the cloud. You also get a speaker and microphone for two-way conversations, and infrared LEDs that help it see about 30 feet in the dark. There’s also a microSD card slot and an included 8GB memory card to store video when you’re using it to capture footage on the go.
More interesting, there is a built-in two-hour battery in both the camera and its detachable stand. Combined, that means you get about four hours of battery life and video recording if your power goes out. When it comes back on, the system automatically uploads that footage to the cloud, so you don’t have a gap in your recordings. You can also connect directly to the FX to download footage or change settings when it’s running off batteries alone.
The Flir FX triggers its recording through a sensing mixture of motion, temperature and sound. Using the Flir FX app for iOS or Android, which is currently the only way to set up and view footage until a web viewer is released later this year, you can check off the boxes you want to track motion in, windows, doors or specific objects in your house.
RapidRecap
Primary to Flir FX’s features includes a video replay tool called RapidRecap, a technology which shows you all the activity that’s been captured over the course of several hours, overlaid at once, with timestamps. This means you don’t actually need to watch the entire recording to see various actions taken place. Instead, it’s presented in an experience where things such as cars and people move around and through each other with little floating timestamps. You can use this information to jump to that particular video snippet, and see it separate of everything else.
RapidRecaps is designed as sort of a comprehensive, time-saving aggregator of long recordings. In other words, if you have security footage you need to view to catch some act of crime, RapidRecap allows you to view all of the footage in fraction of the time. To use RapidRecaps, you’ll need to setup a couple of special menus inside of Flir’s app, which lets you pick what time of the day you want to view. Then it takes a few minutes to churn through the footage, which resides on Flir’s servers, before you can see it back in the app.
Cloud Services
The Flir FX’s real magic is its free cloud service, complete with alerts. The company gives you a generous two days of free cloud recordings as part of its Flir Cloud service. You don’t have to use this to operate the FX, but it’s nice to have. This is not two full days of around the clock footage that’s being uploaded — just every motion or sound event that’s been recorded. Those who need more can upgrade to a seven- and 30-day plan for $9.99/month or $99.95/year and $19.99/month or $199.95/year respectively. The paid plans increase the number of RapidRecap videos you can create, how long those videos can span, and how long they’re stored. The free plan allows for three RapidRecap videos.
Multi-Purpose
As mentioned, the Flir FX pulls double duty, not just as an action camera, but also as a security camera and a dashboard camera. To use these multiple applications, you’ll need to buy a sport case or dash suction mount which sell as $69.99 and $49.99 add-ons. Even with the cost of the camera, that ends up being cheaper than a high-end GoPro. The FX is a very attractive product, especially if you want something that can transform into something else when you change your mind about your camera needs.
Bottom Line
The Flir FX is a very intriguing entry in the home security cam market. It matches several of its competitors on functionality and price, but adds a powerful and potentially useful cutting-edge forensic feature in RapidRecap, and its 160-degree camera will watch the entire room. You can also use the app’s SmartZone feature to divide the room into a grid. You then touch and select the areas you want it to pay attention to.
Finally, the ability to move and store everything to Flir’s cloud is a bonus, and the camera also includes built-in night-vision, which works well, and the ability to have the camera start recording based on temperature or humidity is also a plus.
The Flir FX runs $199.99, while the bundle with the weather-proof outdoor security casing, which can be mounted outside and adds special infrared LEDs that let the camera see 65 feet in the dark, runs $249.99. Other packages and accessories can be bought Click Here.
