Alphabet's Nest Cam adds animated camera notifications to iOS alerts, auto door recognition

Alphabet's Nest is rolling out updates to its Nest Aware cloud platform and its iOS app, updating notifications with a preview of Nest Cam feeds before entering the app, as well as the ability to automatically detect doors within a camera's view.

Subscribers to the Nest Aware service will see a thumbnail image from the Nest Cam feed in alerts, triggered by the camera detecting motion. Nest Cam owners running iOS 10 or later on their iPhone or iPad will see an animated preview of a saved Nest Cam video clip in the alert, indicating to users what the full clip will show when the app is opened.

Owners of Nest Protect will also benefit from the Nest Cam alert updates. If Nest Protect detects dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, or the presence of smoke, the app will now automatically show live feeds for all nearby Nest Cams, showing how much smoke there is, possible causes, and if anyone or anything is in danger.

As part of the same Nest Aware update, the cloud service can detect if doors are visible within feeds from the Nest Cam and Nest Cam Outdoor. The service will learn to recognize doors in the home from monitoring the live feed, and automatically set an "activity zone" around the door, though users have the option to remove it through the app.

Users have been able to assign activity zones to areas of a camera's view for quite some time, by drawing a box over parts of the image that are of interest, such as valuables or entry points, with alerts able to be sent whenever motion is detected in the region.

Nest aims to roll out the improved notifications and door detection features to paid subscribers of the Nest Aware cloud-based video archival service over the next few weeks.

In a previous update, Nest allowed users to stream Nest Cam feeds to the fourth-generation Apple TV. At the same time, users were provided the ability to create short videos from captured footage, which can then be shared online.