PC World – December 2015

Roundup: Security Cameras
the way down, I was getting “audio event” alerts every few minutes,
even with just the pets in the house. I finally turned off soundtriggered
recording to save storage space.
At one point, I decided to create a RapidRecap of some of the
overnight footage I recorded. This entails swiping along a scrolling
timeline to set the start and end times for the hours you want to
capture. Creating the recap isn’t quick; I selected a span of five hours
and the recap took a full five minutes to produce.
As far as I could see, there was no
Flir FX
AT A GLANCE
The Flir FX has an impressive
array of features, but this home
security camera has some
hurdles to overcome before it’s
ready to contend in a crowded
DIY security category.
PROS
• 160-degree viewing angle
• Crystal-clear video
• Local and cloud storage options
CONS
• RapidRecaps are hard to follow
• Buggy two-way audio
• Takes nearly 30 minutes
to set up
$200
progress monitor other than a
percentage above the RapidRecap
icon, which is visible only when the
actions menu is open. I did, however,
get an alert when the recap was
ready.
The resulting videos—plural,
because RapidRecap breaks the
activity up into smaller videos to
keep the scene from becoming too
busy—combined several events
triggered by the family cat’s
nocturnal wanderings into a collage
of ghostly images of him stalking
and leaping over himself. It was an
eerie effect heightened by the
night vision and floating
timestamps. Though it made for
curious viewing, the superimposing
of asynchronous images over each
other made it tough to follow the
chronology of the footage. While it
may be OK for a log of the day’s
events, it’s probably not something
you want to contend with if you’re
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