Vivint to roll out neighborhood-focused app

LAS VEGAS—At CES 2018 Vivint unveiled Streety, a free app that can help protect a neighborhood through connectivity to shared cameras, which will be launching March 1 in the U.S. and Canada, Clint Gordon-Carroll, vice president and general manager of cameras at Vivint Smart Home, told Security Systems News.

Gordon-Carroll commented on the influx of IP cameras in the consumer space as a starting point for the planning behind Streety. “The consumer shelves are filling up with these IP cameras, and consumers want to buy them,” he said. “From that insight and watching this proliferation, Vivint started looking at: How does the smart home expand outside of the home, into the smart neighborhood, and how do we network these things together?”

Through Streety, consumers can look through neighbor's outdoor cameras or video doorbells—with their permission—to keep an eye on the neighborhood. They can share footage with this neighborhood network to look for a lost pet, track a delivery truck or check in on children playing in the area.

Connected consumers can use the app to request footage of a certain time or incident, and users can also provide written input through the platform if they don't have a camera. Streety users do not need to be Vivint customers, they only need to utilize a camera that works with the app. Vivint estimates that one out of every 10 Streety users will be a Vivint customer, Gordon-Carroll said.

“We want to be able to network the cameras together because we want to be able to create more intelligent neighborhoods, just like [how] Vivint is focused on creating an intelligent home,” Gordon-Carroll said.

Shortly after the launch of the app, Vivint will be rolling out a “Works with Streety” program, Gordon-Carroll said. The company is already working with a couple of camera manufacturers, he noted. Camera partners can have branding inside the app to help users know which camera feed they are viewing.

Vivint started developing Streety about 12 months ago, according to Gordon-Carroll. Part of the development involved testing in “beta-neighborhoods” in Las Vegas, Dallas, Baton Rouge, La., Tampa, Fla., and in Utah over about four months.

“It really only takes two people, two neighbors that care about each other, to make it a viable experience,” Gordon-Carroll said, adding that Vivint customers are often in close proximity to each other. “We're building this out … neighborhood by neighborhood.”