The Importance of Home Security: How Apple's HomeKit Can Help

As someone who values security, I can attest to the importance of having a reliable home security system in place. Recently, I had the opportunity to explore some smart home products that can help keep your space secure without breaking the bank. In this article, I'll be discussing my experience with the Acara camera hub G2H and how it integrates seamlessly with Apple's HomeKit platform.

One of the things that struck me about Acara was their commitment to making a "ginormous" investment in HomeKit. All of their smart products are designed to work perfectly with this platform, which makes it an ideal choice for anyone looking to integrate their home security system into their existing setup. But what really sets Acara apart is the level of end-to-end encryption that comes built-in. This means that when you're using their cameras, you have complete control over where your video data is going and who has access to it.

To get started with Acara's HomeKit-enabled products, you'll need an iCloud account. The good news is that if you've already got a cloud storage plan, you can leverage that to store more than 10 hours of video footage without having to upgrade to a larger plan. However, if you don't want to worry about cloud storage, you do have the option to save everything locally by using a microSD card. This feature is particularly useful for those who prefer not to rely on cloud storage.

For this review, I chose to use the Acara camera hub G2H, which is an incredibly small and powerful device that allows you to record and stream crystal-clear 1080p images both in daylight and nighttime due to its built-in infrared sensor. One of the standout features of this camera is its ability to automatically trigger a light upstairs if it detects motion outside, which can help deter potential intruders from targeting your home.

But what really sets Acara apart is their commitment to making HomeKit integration easy and accessible to everyone. Even those with no experience whatsoever with automations or smart home technology can figure out how to set up and customize their system in just a matter of seconds. And with the HomeKit app, you can easily set up your cameras, motion sensors, and other devices to work together seamlessly.

The beauty of platforms like HomeKit is that they offer so many options for different types of smart home devices. Whether you're looking for a camera, motion sensor, water detector, or something else entirely, there's likely an option available that can help make your life easier and more convenient. And with the cost of these devices continuing to drop, it's never been more affordable to upgrade your home security system.

In conclusion, I highly recommend checking out Acara's HomeKit-enabled products if you're looking for a reliable and easy-to-use home security system. With their commitment to end-to-end encryption, easy setup, and customization options, they offer something truly special that can help keep your space secure without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is sponsored by acara the all-new iphone 12 lineup officially out everyone's talking about what accessories they'll pick up but there's one must-have accessory that you might not have thought of and it might be the most important one yet so weird flex uh spidey's a buddy of mine uh but he's got other things to do then fly all the way out to california to you know check out my office but security is like stupid important it's something you don't always think about until you need it so i want to show you guys some really cool things you can do to keep your place secure without breaking your bank so some smart home products like generally make me laugh with just ridiculousness of them i mean i've seen pans that are smart that need software updates not everything in the home needs to be smart and the things that do sometimes can be a complicated convoluted mess trying to figure out ecosystems how to get things to work if you want to set up automations you almost need to know scripting for some of these platforms it can become just really complicated to figure out how to do and how to work it's like homekit's been a thing and it's been growing and getting better but with like the new iphone 12 lineup particular ios 14 i feel like homekit has kind of grown up as a really solid smart home platform i think especially when it comes to secure video it's almost unrivaled so if you haven't heard of akara i think they're becoming a pretty big household name they're really leaning into making a ginormous commitment to home kits all their smart products are kind of ideal for pairing with it they're most known for their smart cameras and home security cameras that they have in home monitoring you can substitute the akara setup for sort of other home kit things if you want but showing you how powerful homekit can be acara sort of the perfect example so first you're going to need an icloud account it's going to sort of leverage that storage and if you've got the 200 gigabyte plan and you want to store more than say 10 hours of video and add more than one camera you're gonna have to upgrade to the two terabyte option that's 9.99 a month but at least with that you won't really have to worry about running out of storage so also it's worth noting that if you didn't want to worry about cloud storage and wanted to just save everything locally you do have the option to save everything to a microsd card which just goes right into the bottom of the camera so the list of homekit compatible cameras is growing but for this example we're going to use the acara camera hub g2h it's a super tiny camera allows you to record and stream a really crystal clear 1080p image typically with other cameras you'll see this sort of super choppy it'll look like crazy low res and sometimes it's just not usable especially if you want to see like somebody's face about this you're gonna be able to get a crystal clear picture in both daytime and nighttime due to the infrared sensor that's built in so and just a heads up here as well the cameras don't have a battery in them so you do have to plug them in with micro usb so i think another big perk to using a car over like the tons of other cameras out there is that inside of the app they use an event timeline it automatically will mark events for you so like if you pair this system with other car products like the door sensors window sensors motion sensors flood detectors really anything like that they work together to mark these events you can conveniently just click on the dot and go right to the event having to sort of scrub through hours of footage so now like i just mentioned arcara does sell other smartphone products so you can just buy one kit to get everything started so the appropriately named starter kit does come with a hub but with their new g2h camera you don't need a separate hub anymore as actually the cameras act as their own hub for the entire cara suite or for other home kid enabled products it's all that high-res video is is great and fine but you can find that anywhere and where i think the acara system and really where it leverages homekit and the strength of homekit uh is in the end-to-end encryption i'm about you but when i see these security cameras that are selling for 15 with a limited cloud recording it raises red flags for me as to where the information and where my video is going so with homekit and the encryption you control what the network sees and really as far as you can trust any company i feel like apple is one of the ones you can trust the most with your information if you're not familiar setting all this up is really easy and for most home kit stuff you can set up right inside of the home kit app with your car stuff that's no exception but you can also set them up in addition inside of the car app itself and it's really easy it's a qr code you scan it and when you do that you'll also get additional features that are outside of sort of that home kit suite if you decide to use them so like for example you can use the camera as intercom speaker and if you set it up inside of the acara app it'll automatically be inside of your home kit app when you open that up so all this stuff is awesome but the big question i think is why does it matter like why would somebody want this uh the first answer is it's really cool i mean i'm like that's true it's fun to have all this stuff set up and and working and as somebody who's had let's just say security issues i've had my studio be robbed a few years ago at the old technobuffalo offices my parents home got broken into last year there's legitimate security concerns that this setup can help address for example a motion detector outside can trigger a light upstairs in your room that make potential robber or somebody with bad intentions think somebody's home it could set off an alarm or it can alert you there's a lot of practical uses for this as well if you've got kids it goes beyond a security being able to see if your kids are coming home from school if they're coming home on their own checking in on your dog checking in on your grandparents whatever it might be it gives you extra functionality and it's not just smart for smart sick like i said you can customize the system to work for you so for me i have outdoor cameras i have indoor cameras i have motion sensors and smart plugs at my house and homekit makes it really easy to sort of set up those automations and those things that might seem complicated to set up are really simple inside of the homekit app that's kind of why i've been drawn to what acara is offering and doing because integrates so easily with homekit if you have no experience whatsoever with automations or smart home stuff you can figure this out in just a matter of seconds and get your home and your office wherever you want to set this up working and working really well so whatever your home or work setup is there's some version of a smart home or some piece of kit that's going to make things easier and better for you sort of the beauty of these platforms and one like home kit is that there's so many options out there for different things maybe you just want a camera maybe you want a motion sensor or a water detector because your bathroom floods whatever it might be there's a choice for you and sort of this misnomer that home automation is complicated and hard to do and also expensive is really no longer the case so i encourage you to check it out if you want to learn more about the acara products and stuff i talked about here i'll link to them all down below happy home setup\n"