By Marcelle Dibrell
As the price tag for home security cameras has gone down, they’ve become increasingly popular for homeowners to protect their properties from theft and to keep an eye on small children or elderly family members — all from a smart phone while away from home.
Now, you can tell your customers that there’s a new home security camera that can help them to protect children from drowning in backyard swimming pools.
It’s called SwamCam, and it was created by Asher Brand shortly after he moved into a new house with a pool. With young children at home, the pool seemed like a huge potential danger.
“Nearly every summer, I would read articles about accidental drownings and the unfortunate loss of life, especially young children,” Brand said.
What he wanted for his pool didn’t exist at the time. While there were other pool security systems available, they all had their flaws.
Many were only for in-water use, designed to alert users about potential drownings only when people were already in the water and when the
Asher Brand, CEO and inventor of SwamCam — Wanted a camera to help protect his children when swimming in their home pool. The product did not exist, so he invented it. camera system is enabled by the user.
Brand knew that artificial intelligence was an essential aspect of what he wanted, which would allow the camera to be able to recognize specific threats.
It was early 2018 when he began brainstorming with a developer about the idea for a swimming pool security camera.
“Our developers have worked on other products, which include live video feed over Wi-Fi, and so we’re somewhat familiar with the landscape of what we needed,” Brand said. “This was definitely helpful in shortening the development process, but our system is so unique that it still required an enormous effort to accomplish what we did with the little resources that we worked with.”
The result is an AI-based camera system that is always on, always watching the pool area, and which, when armed, sounds alarms when it detects human movement. Homeowners can constantly monitor their pools through a connection on their smart phones.
If there’s unauthorized access into the pool area, three different alarms will go off: One in the backyard pool area; one inside the house; and one on the phone. Users get a push notification (a phone alert from the app), and they can tap “open up live view” and can have a live conversation with whomever is in the pool area.
There’s also a “hot button” to dial 911 from “live view” if needed.
According to Brand, the device has saved the lives of at least six children in the last two years. Some of the parents called the company tech support to say so.
“Our system was armed, and the parents heard the alarm when the kids got access because the gate or sliding door was mistakenly left open,” Brand said. “Our alarm triggered, and those kids were saved because the parents heard it either on their phone or in the house and ran out before they ended up in the water.”
Brand wants service professionals and builders to help spread the word.
“It’s so important for the pool service or installers to educate parents and families that every single pool needs multiple layers of protection,” Brand said. “We tell customers ‘Don’t just have our system. You should have a fence as well and teach the kid how to swim. The more layers, you have the better off you will be.’” According to Brand, there’s always the possibility of a breach in one layer.
“Gates are left open; kids climb over fences,” Brand said. “Even if the kid knows how to swim, something can go wrong. You’ve got to have multiple layers of protection.”
The SwamCam Camera Pool Alarm System is available for purchase on Amazon or direct from SwamCam at www.theswamcam.com for $495.
