Keep an Eye on the Kids When Away From Home

Thank you Ooma Butterfleye for sponsoring this post.

When my children were younger, we had some really nice babysitters, usually family friends whom we’ve known for years.  I’ve been blessed to never have any problems with any of them.  But there was one time…

My 10-year-old daughter told me that our babysitter had some friends over while we were gone.  As only our babysitter was home when we came back home from our evening, this surprised me. 

I totally trusted our babysitter (and I still do), but the fact that she had friends visit and didn’t tell me about it was a little unnerving.  

Years later, there was the time when I came home from a board meeting after 10 pm to find my husband’s car parked in the middle of our cul-de-sac with his door opened wide, a cop car with shining lights across the street, and no husband in the car. 

He had another board meeting and apparently came home just before me.  My 15-year-old daughter was watching our son in our home.

Talk about unnerving!

It turns out that our neighbor across the street had been robbed and the police were called out.  My husband got stopped by the cop on our street in front of our home and immediately fled into our home to check on the kids. 

It was the same cop that stopped me and told me what happened (to my husband and the neighbor).  It took my husband a long time to come out but when he did, he said the kids were safe.

In both circumstances, I had little control over what was occurring at my house while I was away.  As any parent knows, the loss of control in situations like this is UNNERVING.

How could I do things differently?  For starters, I could take my kids with me everywhere.  🙂  But that’s not feasible and it plays into fear, I prefer living my life out in faith.

The second option is to get a camera to keep an eye on the kids when we are both gone.  Today’s cameras are easy-to-install and easy-to-view on most smartphones.  As a family tech blogger, we have tried a number of them.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been using the Ooma Butterfleye  Smart Home Security Camera. 

There are some very unique features that I’ve never seen in a home security camera before.  Like others, it takes video in HD and detects movement, and encrypts all video uploaded to the cloud with bank-level encryption.

Let’s Face It!

But the Ooma Butterfleye also has face recognition capabilities (with the home secure subscription)!  The Ooma Butterfleye identifies different faces picked up after movement occurs and gives you the opportunity in the Butterfleye app to name them. 

So when you look at motion or sound clips under the apps Feed & Events, the app tells you “Lori was seen” as opposed to “unknown person detected.”

This is helpful because after I named my family members and frequent friends, I receive notifications about the “unknown person” in my home.  Now, THIS is what I’m interested in, not videoing everything that goes on in our family room!

This facial recognition is a really amazing technology.  I can even use it to recognize my dogs, (although only in the Apple ButterFleye app, not the Android one).

Keep An Eye on Things at Home

Since my daughter is now 15, her friends don’t drive yet.  But when they do and they can drive over to the house when we are gone, facial recognition is going to come in very handy. 

Just in case a friend drops in, I will be alerted and the Ooma Butterfleye will capture when an unknown “face was detected.”

I can also be alerted when a loud noise occurs or even if the camera was moved. 

One thing that surprised me was when I decided to move the Ooma Butterfleye camera from overlooking our pool to overlooking our family room.  As I reviewed my footage later, it filmed the whole trip!

That’s the beauty of the Ooma Butterfleye.  It has a large 10,400mAh built-in rechargeable battery so should electricity get cut off or someone unplugs the camera, it continues shooting video.  And a 10,400mAh battery is three times larger than my Samsung Note 8 phone, so it’s going to last awhile.

Now you may be wondering, if the electricity gets cut off, sure the camera works, but it will be unable to send video to the cloud.  True.  Nonetheless, the Ooma Butterfleye comes with 16GB of built-in storage for the white version and 32GB for the black version. 

So video capture and footage would continue to be saved without electricity needed.  And when electricity is restored, all recorded data is automatically uploaded to the cloud for easy retrieval.  

Like most cameras, Ooma Butterfleye records video clips based on movement or sound and gives you a timeline of its recordings.  In fact, Ooma Butterfleye will record and send to the cloud up to 7 days of video continuously for free (much more generous than other security camera brands).

After 7 days of video clips, it can be cumbersome if you’re looking for something in particular like Unknown persons detected or when the camera was moved. 

Using the filter screen shown above, just check the item(s) you are interested in and either choose “Show Videos On: CURRENT” or this becomes a dropbox to choose a particular date, within the last 7 days. 

Of course, our furry pups are an endless source of fun for our family, we can’t get enough of them. 

With the iOS Ooma Butterfleye app, I can just select “Pet was detected” to focus on all of the video clips taken of their funny antics.  Never before have I seen such customization available.

The ability to keep an eye on things from afar give me some peace of mind and a chuckle when I watch the pups.

The Ooma Butterfleye has a contemporary look and easily fits in with your room decor.  In this picture, the cord is attached from the back and plugged into an outlet about 2 feet away.  

But there are times where you might want to place the camera in a place where an outlet is not accessible.  Due to its large 10,400 mAh battery, you can unplug it and place the Ooma Butterfleye on a shelf.  You will be notified when the battery runs low so you can charge it.

You may ask, “did you use the Ooma Butterfleye much to keep an eye on the kids while I was gone this past couple of weeks?”  Nope. 

I received no alerts from the Ooma Butterfleye to be concerned about.  I did check the video clips the next day or so.  I found that the “loud noise detected” was simply my kids trying to outsing the other in the kitchen.

The 10 video filters are fantastic.  I am less interested in watching everything that happened while I was gone than I am in being alerted with something unusual is happening in my home.  The Ooma Butterfleye helps me keep an eye on my kids, not police them.

Although should I be away and become alerted to something the kids are doing, I do have the ability to talk to my kids at home through the Ooma Butterfleye app (iOS version) to set them both straight at once.  The 2-way talk feature is available with the home secure subscription package.

Whether you’re looking for a solution to watch your teens while you’re away from home, keep an eye on possible intruders, or even get simple pleasure by watching your dog at home, the Ooma Butterfleye gives you the option to customize what you see based on what’s important to you.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.