Peeple: Get a Photo of Who’s Knocking at Your Door

Yesterday, I was watching the developments from the International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, like I do each year, when a product stood out to me as one that had great potential as a missing link in home security.

Peeple is a disc-like device that’s affixed to the backside of any door with a peephole or window. When someone on the other side of your door, knocks, opens, or closes your door, Peeple takes a photo through your peephole and wirelessly beams it to your smartphone so you can see who’s at your door.

Peeple Details

The product interacts with your smartphone via Wi-Fi to send you an instantaneous push notification, (through the cloud) with a photo whenever the accelerometer/magnetometer inside the device is engaged. This means that more than a knock or a turn of a door handle will trigger a photo to be taken. The photo also appears on your phone in less than a second.

A forced entry or kick to the door (that your door will hopefully absorb because you have a Door Devil installed right?) would send you an alert as well. Because we all know that criminals always knock first. I’m joking, but many actually do to see if there’s anyone home first before they try anything.

Something else I thought of is that Peeple, while blocking your live view through the peephole, would also prevent someone from using a reverse peephole viewer to look into your home through the front door. To play devil’s advocate here, the device would also be defeated by a piece of tape if a criminal suspected its use.

A few other details about the Peeple, are that it can help screen visitors or keep track of when people come and go from your home, like your kids. It’s also event based, which means it’s not using power when it’s not actively being triggered to record an event that occurs. It’s a battery powered device which means that the event based nature helps the charge to the Peeple last up to 6-months.

It’s also meant to augment your home security system, as even with cameras, the front door/porch area of your home can be a type of blind spot, depending on your home’s layout. Peeple can give you a view of this area without you needing to be home. Also mentioned in the video below is the ability to live-tweet what the Peeple is seeing, for instance if you want the world to see your trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

One flaw that I saw during the product demonstration video was the absence of detecting a doorbell ring. Most homes have a doorbell and many people ring the doorbell and don’t knock. That was addressed by the demonstrator in stating that many accessories are in the works. This was pretty interesting, as described were a bluetooth doorbell, a light that could interact with Peeple and even a remote lockbox outside the house that could be opened remotely once you recognized the visitor. There was also talk of tying into a bluetooth doorlock.

Product Demonstration

So to recap, if you have a door and a smartphone, you’re a potential customer of the Austin, TX based company, Peeple. While there’s no price available yet, they state that it’s less than competitive like products for the DIY home security market, such as Dropcam.

Check out the TechCrunch demo video below to learn more. You can sign up at peeple.io to be notified when more information is available on the device, like when their crowdfunding campaign starts.

What do you think? Is this something you’d install on your font door?