Sunflowers and Bees are the latest in smart-home security

Sunflower Labs has raised $6M in seed money since 2016

Sunflower Labs founders Alex Pachikov and Christian Eheim (Credit: Wikipedia, Pixabay)
Sunflower Labs founders Alex Pachikov and Christian Eheim (Credit: Wikipedia, Pixabay)

The latest in home security looks a lot like your garden.

Two new products — sensors dubbed Sunflowers and an aerial drone called The Bee — were launched this week at the CES conference in Las Vegas.

They are the brainchild of San Francisco-based Sunflower Labs, which was founded by Alex Pachikov and Christian Eheim in 2016. The company’s new security system includes Sunflowers, which are motion sensors that show cars, animals and people on a digital map in real-time. The Bee is an autonomous drone that can livestream video. (The aptly-named Hive is a charging station for the Bee.)

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The products are billed as better than traditional, passive security systems since they can give property owners more detailed information. The Bee gathers data and “learns and reacts to its surroundings,” TechCrunch reported.

Sunflower Labs is part of a growing field (pun intended) of smart-home security systems. (In some cases, of course, only safe rooms will do.) To date, Sunflower Labs has raised just over $6 million in seed money from investors including General Catalyst. More expensive than your average gardening tool, the system starts at $9,950. The company is taking pre-orders, with a $999 deposit, and expects to deliver them in mid-2020.
[TechCrunch] — E.B. Solomont

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