Harbor Monitor Add On

Standard baby monitors normally have a 3-5” screen and a camera, and they are almost always communicating on a low-frequency (lower than WiFi) radio signal direct from the camera to the monitor. They usually have poor image quality, are limited in range, and lack other features like record/rewind. You cannot access these outside their limited range.

In the past decade, mobile app-based cameras have become popular. These cameras don’t come with a dedicated monitoring device, and you have to use an app on your phone or tablet to access the stream. You may hear these cameras called ‘IP cameras’ (internet protocol) because they transmit the video & audio from the camera through that company’s (or a 3rd party’s) cloud, then back down to the app on your phone.

Legacy systems have poor range. If you step out onto the back porch, you can often lose connectivity. In many houses they may not work from one side of the house to the other, especially older homes with thicker walls. Also, they are often poorly designed as most come with some sort of external antenna on either the camera or the monitor, that often breaks. Overall, the quality is very poor on most of these devices.

For mobile app-based cameras there are a few factors that impact reliability: phones have an operating system that will reprioritize its computing resources continually. Put more bluntly: phones aren’t designed to let an app (like a baby monitor app) run on it 24/7 with priority over all other parts of the phone. 

Mobile apps can often crash due to code issues and cloud (remote servers) connections can often break and not be reestablished without an intentional reset. Considering the phone is the only monitoring device, these systems aren’t reliable because phones are often used for other things… like phone calls! If your phone dies or you forget to plug it in, there is no way to alert you of a loss of connection.

For all of these reasons and more, mobile app-based cameras increase anxiety of parents, instead of making things easier.

We designed Harbor to resolve these issues. If a Harbor camera disconnects, it alerts the dedicated Monitor and also our Mobile Apps. With many of these WiFi app based camera systems, someone can literally unplug the camera and you would never know it was disconnected until you go to pull up the camera video/audio on your app.

It’s simple: we’ve invested more time and effort into the selection of our image sensor, lens, and communication channels from the very beginning understanding the requirements parents have.

We use an omnivision image 2k sensor that is geared specifically for low-light conditions. The sensor’s resolution is actually higher than mobile phone displays can support, but we plan for the future.

Our lens has a focal ratio of 1.6. “A what?” Our lens is wide (take a look at it!) and has better light-gathering ability than any other baby-monitor camera. This allows you to see better at night, while shining less infrared light on your little ones (more below on that).

While you are home, all camera video/audio stays local in the home. Other mobile-app based systems send that sensitive data through their (or a partner’s) cloud - which essentially means “someone else’s computer.” It is because this communication takes place across multiple states or countries that causes other companies to intentionally degrade the image quality so they can get it back to the phone in a decent round-trip time. Think about it like sending an email - if you have a large file attachment, it’s going to take a while for that email to send. Harbor doesn’t have that problem because all of our communication happens locally on your home network. If you are outside the home accessing your feed via our App, of course the communication will leave the house, securely, though we are able to maintain a high resolution that is stored directly on your camera.

Yes! Monitoring your children on a mobile app isn’t a bad idea, it’s a great idea! But not when it’s the only monitor you have and not when it’s reliant on cloud connections. We also have a Desktop app, making Harbor unique in the baby monitoring world. You can use our picture-in-picture while getting things done at your computer! 

To be clear, a repurposed iPad or other tablet doesn’t count as a dedicated monitoring device - they have the same issues as phones (used for other things, prioritizes resources, still reliant on cloud connectivity, etc.)

We will have industry leading security and privacy, incorporated from the very beginning. With security and privacy, there are three main areas of concern:

• Where are the products made and what types of components are in them
• Data storage 
• Communication security

You should know where your baby monitor and camera are made. Our production Monitors will be made in Vietnam and our Cameras are made in India. Critically, our processors (the devices’ “brains”) are made by Qualcomm and Ambarella, US, publicly traded companies that lead their industries. Virtually every other baby monitor company manufacturers their devices in China with Chinese processors with questionable firmware engaging with Chinese servers. Versions manufactured by some top baby monitor companies used processors now banned by the US government.

Mobile app-based cameras all store video/audio in the cloud. Who owns those servers? Where are they located? What are their security protocols? These are reasonable questions parents should have answers to, though you are very unlikely to get them. Harbor video/audio is only stored on the camera itself, with end-to-end encryption.

The cloud-communication of other systems also creates vulnerabilities for live-streaming video/audio. All Harbor communication happens on your home network (unless you are outside of your home), secure through mutually-authenticated TLS (mTLS) and end-to-end encryption. Those are a lot of words that mean there are multiple, industry-leading moats we have created around a castle that we have built for you. As you and your family deserve!