PC World – December 2015

Roundup: Security Cameras
objects, people, and faces, from the monitored environment while
filtering out unwanted motion triggers, such
as moving leaves.
Another feature called Day Briefs eases the headache of
slogging through hours of surveillance footage. Using Scene
Intuition, the Circle rounds up the day’s most “interesting and
important” events and generates a 30-second timelapsed
highlight video so you can easily digest all the day’s action.
Recorded video is encrypted and stored free in the cloud for
24 hours, after which it’s deleted to make room for the next day’s
footage. Each account has its own private cloud on the Circle Cloud
Service and is protected by an account password. According to
Logitech, longer-term storage options under a premium
(i.e., extra cost) offering are in the works.
Setup and usage
The Circle immediately differentiated itself with its easy setup. The
camera came charged, so I just set it on top of our entertainment
center and downloaded the app, which is the sole interface for the
camera—there is no web portal. Within seconds of launching the app
and logging in to my home network I
had a 135-degree wide-angle view of my
living room.
The app’s main screen shows your live
feed in landscape mode only, with a
scrolling activity log of time-stamped
events down the right side. To view a
specific recording, you just press the
time stamp. Tap the Day Brief icon to get
a CliffsNotes version of the day’s
recordings. These daily roundups are
The Circle’s industrial
design doesn’t stray far
from Logitech’s webcams.
actually the Circle’s best feature; one I’d
love to see more security cameras adopt.
Swiping left on the feed screen opens
106