Do we really need houses that spy on us? Homes of the future will have cameras on the mantlepiece that record our every move
- Withings home HD camera boasts 'wide angle' lens to cover entire room
- Campaigners warn it will help controlling partners spy on one another
- Other new gadgets include frying pan which tells you when food is ready
It would be some people’s idea of a nightmare: a camera in the corner of the sitting room monitoring their family’s every movement.
But experts at the Ideal Home Show predict this is the way many of us will live in future.
Their vision of the ‘ideal smart home’ includes a small camera, housed in a pale wooden casing that would not look out of place on a mantelpiece.
Withings say their home HD camera will allow family members to interact via tablet or PC when away from home, but campaigners say it could be used by controlling partners to keep an eye on one another
The £169.95 gadget can be used to film family life and stream HD footage to users’ tablet devices or mobile phones, even when they are away from home.
Withings, the company which makes the ‘home camera’, boasts that its wide-angle lens means ‘no corner will go unseen’, even at night.
When the sun sets, the camera automatically goes into Night Vision mode, ‘using an infrared mechanical filter to see through the darkness’.
It will also record sound, monitor air quality and send users alerts when it detects sound or movement.
According to Withings, this constant monitoring device will ‘facilitate family interactions’, by capturing moments together that some family members would not normally see.
But privacy campaigners drew comparisons with Big Brother – the authoritarian state which watches people’s every move in 1984, the dystopian novel by George Orwell.
Other gadgets featuring at the Ideal Home Show include the Pantelligent frying pan which links to a smartphone and tells you how long to cook food for
Controlling partners could constantly use it to monitor family members.
Renate Samson, of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This is keeping an eye on people, not interacting with them. There is no privacy in your own home, from your own family.’
Other gadgets in the Ideal Home Show’s vision of the future are less controversial.
People in flats too small for a dining table could try the Picture Table, a pack away table that can be turned into a framed mirror and hung on the wall.
The Pantelligent frying pan sends information to the users’ tablet or mobile phone, telling them how much longer to cook their food.
The Ideal Home Show opens on March 20 at the Olympia London exhibition centre.
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