Nest Cams Can Now Automatically Recognize Doors

Do you get a lot of annoying, unwanted alerts about your Nest Cam? If so, this problem should soon be a thing of the past, as a new version of the Nest app should cut down on unwanted notifications and make the ones you get more helpful.

As part of the update, the company introduced a new automatic door detection feature for Nest Cam Indoor ($154.98 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and Outdoor ($179.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) as part of its Nest Aware(Opens in a new window) subscription service.

“As we roll out this feature over the next few weeks, Nest Aware will learn to recognize the doors in your home, automatically create Activity Zones around them, and send you a notification when there’s motion there,” Nest’s Director of Product Marketing Maxime Veron wrote in a blog post(Opens in a new window). Nest Aware subscribers have always been able to manually draw Activity Zones around areas they want to keep an eye on, but now this feature will be automatic.

“By recognizing patterns over time, our sensors and deep learning algorithms let us make door detection an automated feature,” Veron added. Alerts from Nest Cam will include a thumbnail image, so you can see at a glance if someone wearing a ski mask is busting open your door with a crowbar. Those on Android 7 and iOS 10 will get an animated preview of the video clip, without having to open the app.

Nest Aware starts at $10 a month (or $100 a year) for the first camera in your home for 10 days of continuous video history or $30 a month (or $300 a year) for 30 days of continuous video history. From there, tack on $5 a month ($50 a year) for additional cameras with the 10-day plan or $15 a month ($150 a year) for the 30-day plan.

Meanwhile, Nest also made some changes to improve alerts that Nest Cam owners get from Nest Protect ($119.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . Now, if you get an alert about smoke or carbon monoxide, you’ll automatically see live video from all your Nest Cams.

Plus, Android users can now press and hold the Nest app icon to open a specific Nest product, or drag and drop these shortcuts to their Android desktop.