Beyond Motion Detection: AI Search & Descriptive Alerts
We have a lot of smart cameras in our home: more than 30 at last count! While lens clarity, resolution, and pan/tilt/zoom features have improved over the years, reviewing footage can still be a chore. You have to go into an app, find the tagged video, and watch it.
To address this, many smart camera brands are turning to artificial intelligence. Initially, this meant detecting humans, vehicles, pets, or packages. Now, major brands are developing the ability to search footage using natural language, like asking to see the “man in a brown shirt” to spot a delivery driver.
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains links that may earn us a commission from Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Toucan Smart Home provided the S5 Wireless Camera we reviewed. Opinions and conclusions are our own.
Our first AI+ experience: Toucan S5 Wireless Outdoor Security Camera
We recently tested the Toucan S5 Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, which offers a great example of this. It includes “AI+,” a feature that sends descriptive alerts, such as “a black cat walked across the path” or “a red vehicle pulled into the driveway.” While it requires a Toucan Shield subscription for these features, we believe it’s a valuable use of AI that makes motion alerts truly actionable.
Reolink: AI Search without a Subscription
While Toucan Smart Home is offering this as a subscription service, other camera companies are adding AI search functionality without a subscription, but through a separate device.
At CES in January, Reolink demonstrated their AI box, an add-on device that allows you to search through your recorded footage to find what you are looking for and even create alerts for specific scenarios – such as “tell me when a person opens a window” or “tell me when a dog enters my yard.”
At IFA 2026 in Berlin, Reolink announced that the ReoNeura™ AI engine with the AI search capability will be included in their Reolink Home Hub 2, expected to ship this fall. It will allow you to connect up to 8 Reolink cameras with up to 16 TB of local storage.
So far we find these features really useful and we look forward to more meaningful alerts from our cameras in the future.
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