Pet cams

With today’s tech, you don’t have to be at home to keep your pets safe, entertained and fed – get the right pet cam installed, it’s almost as if you never left

- David Nield

Smart home tech continues to get more affordable and more capable all the time, as manufacturers get better at packing more features into gadgets that get smaller and smaller – as you can see on page 27. Helped by-products like dinky smart speakers and boilers with smart thermostats attached, the smart home market is now vibrant, quickly evolving one.

Home security cameras are a good example of this trend as well. Not too long ago, getting your home under 24-7 surveillance would’ve required a team of professional installers, copious amounts of wiring, and hundreds of rupees of expensive kit – but nowadays, you can do the same job with a couple of inexpensive wireless cameras, and get everything set up yourself in just a few minutes. Even better, you can usually control them with your voice and from your smartphone, tablet or computer.

It turns out that the main features of these home security cameras motion detection, two-way audio, a live feed sent to your phone at any time – also lend themselves nicely to the job of looking after your pets. Rather than watching out for unwelcome intruders when you’re away from home, you can make sure your dogs or cats (or both) are behaving themselves. (They also work for watching sleeping babies by the way, but we’re concentrating on small furry animals here.)

As well as home security cameras being used as pet monitors, we’re also seeing dedicated pet cams hit the market too – devices that can feed and even play with your canine or feline friend. If you know that your pets are particularly troublesome when left on their own, you might want to invest in a device that has a few more bells and whistles to keep them distracted while you’re away.