Ring announces Always Home Cam, autonomous drone for indoor home surveillance

At Amazon’s Fall 2020 hardware event, Ring announced the Always Home Cam, a fully autonomous indoor security drone designed to fly preset paths through homes when triggered by Ring alarms or user commands. Ring President Leila Rouhi explained the product was created because “when something happens our customers want to be able to see exactly what’s going on, but it’s not always feasible to have whole-home coverage” with stationary cameras.

Technical Specifications

The $249 drone features a 1440x1440 HD camera with a 120-degree field of view both vertically and horizontally, enabling comprehensive room scanning during flight. The device can accommodate up to 50 different preset flight paths, with individual flights lasting up to 5 minutes. Unlike traditional consumer drones, the Always Home Cam operates fully autonomously along predetermined routes without allowing manual intervention during flight, ensuring consistent surveillance patterns.

Privacy Design and Limitations

Ring designed the drone with privacy features acknowledging public sensitivity to indoor flying cameras. When docked in its charging base, the camera lens is physically blocked by the device body, preventing any recording while stationary. The drone operates at noise levels comparable to a vacuum cleaner or blender during flight, making its surveillance activity audible to home occupants. However, privacy advocates noted these features did little to address concerns about normalizing constant indoor surveillance or potential hacking vulnerabilities.

Limited Availability and Market Response

Despite the 2020 announcement with an initially planned 2021 release, the Always Home Cam remained in extremely limited availability as of 2024, available only through invitation-only orders. The restricted rollout suggested either technical challenges or subdued market demand for autonomous indoor surveillance drones, though Ring continued promoting the product as part of its expanding ecosystem of home monitoring devices.