Modern society is moving from the Internet era to the Internet of Things era. With the continuous popularization of the Internet of Things, intelligent devices suitable for various scenarios emerge in an endless stream. As an important entrance of smart home ecology, smart camera has become an important carrier of security monitoring, entertainment interaction and smart home, playing an increasingly important role in the family scene.
HarmonyOS is HarmonyOS ‘first smart camera product, featuring distributed care and multi-device interworking. As one of the first vendors to collaborate with HarmonyOS, why did Puffin Join the HarmonyOS ecosystem and what innovations have been achieved with the Puffin camera? What imaginative space extension will this product bring to the traditional home camera market? Yin Li, Head of Research and development at Puffin Technology, sat down with HarmonyOS to share the story behind being HarmonyOS 2.0’s eco-partner.
Puffin has partnered with HarmonyOS to revolutionize home camera intelligence
At present, with the development of AI, 5G and other intelligent technologies and ecology, home cameras are evolving in the direction of intelligence and scene, playing a crucial role in home security, nursing the elderly, children, pets and other aspects, and users are also putting forward higher requirements for home cameras. Traditional home cameras have been criticized by consumers for their cumbersome installation procedures, complex operation methods and poor security.
In line with the product concept based on consumer demand, Puffin has realized these pain points early and has been investing relevant resources in product research and development. They hope to deeply bind the camera with users’ mobile phones and other devices to form an integrated scene experience. Making the camera more efficient and easy to connect to devices like phones was one of the challenges the team inevitably faced. Data synchronization and security issues across devices also stood in the way.
To solve these problems, puffin’s r&d team urgently needs a highly mature cross-device interaction solution, otherwise it will be empty of excellent design ideas, but unable to implement the product. HarmonyOS 2.0 was an opportunity for the Puffin team, whose advanced distributed technology and lightweight design fit the puffin product vision. So the two sides soon reached a joint product development, the recently launched Puffin smart camera Pro is the result of their cooperation.
Experience upgrade, a touch of the device is connected, a point is to see
In general, when consumers use smart camera products, they first need to download an APP, then open the downloaded APP, register, log in and connect to wifi. The whole process takes a long time and the steps are extremely complicated. The HarmonyOS Pro is much more convenient, said Li. “It’s a simple touch of a Huawei phone to quickly configure the network and add the device to the phone to perform functions, eliminating the need to download an APP.”
When it comes to the innovative experience of working with HarmonyOS, Li gives three typical examples.
First, based on HarmonyOS ‘device virtualization capabilities, the Puquin Smart Camera Pro can become a virtual peripheral camera for Huawei phones, becoming the third “eye” for Huawei phones and allowing multiple cameras to be connected at the same time. “If we put one camera in the study and the other on the balcony, we can click a button on the phone to switch the picture of the other camera. Similarly, when making a video call with a mobile phone, users can call up the puffin camera at any time to present the picture to each other in real time, and experience a full-scene, cross-space and convenient call.”
Second, using HarmonyOS ‘distributed file system capabilities, photos and videos captured by puffin cameras can be easily accessed by Huawei phones. “For example, it is difficult to capture the scene of a child’s first walking, first learning to write and draw. With the puffin camera, it can only be responsible for recording. Its built-in hard disk can continuously record pictures and videos in life. You can easily access the photos and videos in your phone’s system album and pick the highlights.”
Third, HarmonyOS made puffin cameras more secure. As a very special product, camera is often applied to some private scenes, which brings great challenges to users’ security and privacy. “HarmonyOS ‘distributed security capabilities allow the pukin camera to capture images that no one can access without authorization from a higher risk device — a mobile phone,” HarmonyOS said.
Focus on industrial upgrading, open up a new competition pattern to achieve a leap in value
As one of the first to join HarmonyOS, the puffins have been successful in their partnership with HarmonyOS. “HarmonyOS is the first home smart camera device to use a unified language through touch-and-click networking, switching from no screen to screen, and multi-device interaction,” said Li. And in different use scenarios, it can organically cooperate with mobile phones and other devices to realize application schemes based on current scenarios. “The moment you add the puffin camera to the mobile phone, it actually becomes a part of the mobile phone.” Ultra-fast connection, minimal interaction and intelligent collaboration make Puffin Smart Camera Pro a very advantageous position in the fierce market competition.
At a higher level, Li says, the collaboration between HarmonyOS and Puquin has great potential. “HarmonyOS is extremely lightweight and easy to install and operate, which makes users more willing to use HarmonyOS products. This will pave the way for us to deliver more and better services to our users in the future. It will help us connect the key links between our manufacturers and their users. It also provides us with a new breakthrough in industrial competition and an opportunity to upgrade the smart industry.”