In the ever-evolving world of home security, where every new device promises to be smaller, smarter, and more connected than the last, one little white ball tried to change everything. The Homeboy security camera burst onto the scene in 2014 with a radical proposition: what if your security camera didn’t need to be plugged in? What if it could stick magnetically to your ceiling? And what if you could recruit your nosy neighbor Bob to help monitor your home?
Spoiler alert: The Homeboy security camera was ambitious, quirky, and ultimately doomed. But was it the best security camera yet? Let’s dive into this fascinating tale of innovation, batteries, and burglary paranoia.
The story of the Homeboy security camera begins with Mark Richards, a man who was burgled not once, not twice, but three times. After the third break-in, Richards apparently thought, “Enough is enough. I’m going to build my own security camera.” Drawing on his background in low-power Wi-Fi chips and VoIP technology, Richards spent four years developing what would become the world’s first wire-free, long-life, Wi-Fi security camera.
The Homeboy security camera launched into public beta on October 21, 2014, ready to shake up a home security market dominated by power-hungry alternatives like Dropcam. The Homeboy security camera went on sale at an introductory price of $149, positioning itself as an affordable option for the masses.
The crown jewel of the Homeboy security camera was its battery life. The camera could operate for up to three months on a single charge, a feat that seemed almost impossible in 2014. How did it achieve this wizardry?
The Homeboy security camera didn’t stream video 24/7 like its competitors. Instead, it spent most of its time in sleep mode, waking only when armed and after detecting motion, booting up in just 500 milliseconds to capture video snippets. This meant you only needed to charge your Homeboy security camera about four times a year through its micro USB port.
According to the company, the three-month battery life was based on three motion sensor activations per day, with the camera typically taking between 2-3 hours to recharge. Of course, if you lived in a busy household or had a mischievous cat, your mileage would vary.
🔔 Does this sound familiar? in 2013 a company called Doorbot pitched their security camera to a panel of investors and were rejected by every one of them. Doorbot is now called Ring and sold for over $1 billion dollars to Amazon.
The Homeboy security camera resembled a cross between a ceramic eyeball and a motorcycle helmet, with a visor pulling down to conceal the camera lens. At roughly 2.5 inches in diameter and weighing just 153 grams (about the size of a tennis ball), this wasn’t your typical intimidating security device.
The real genius? The device remained upright by sticking to a circular cradle with a magnet, and the underside of the cradle was sticky, meaning it could be adhered to pretty much any flat surface, including walls and ceilings. No screws, no drilling, no accidentally hitting a water pipe and flooding your bathroom. Just stick and go.
The magnetic base meant you could easily reposition your Homeboy security camera or take it down for charging without needing a degree in home improvement. This was revolutionary for renters and anyone allergic to power tools.
Here’s where the Homeboy security camera got really interesting. Homeboy was marketed as the only social home security system that leveraged trusted friends and family to make home security more accessible. You could create what the company called a “Posse”, a group of people who would receive alerts when your camera detected motion.
Imagine: You’re on vacation in Bali when your Homeboy security camera detects movement. Instead of just alerting you (you’re probably three mai tais deep by the pool), it also pings your neighbor Susan, your sister in Cleveland, and your college roommate who lives downtown. Someone in your Posse could check the video feed and determine whether it’s a burglar or just your cat knocking over a plant again.
You could designate “Chief” and “Deputy” members who would get notifications and could trigger geofencing, while “Posse” members would also get notified but wouldn’t affect the arming. It was like Neighborhood Watch meets social media, but for your home security.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. What were you really buying when you dropped $149 on a Homeboy security camera?
The Homeboy security camera captured video at 640 x 480 resolution, which was decidedly not HD. To put this in perspective, while competitors were shooting in 720p or even 1080p, the Homeboy security camera was giving you what one might generously call “adequate” quality.
Despite its night vision feature, the camera was not always effective in identifying burglars due to its low video resolution. So while you might catch someone breaking in, identifying them in a police lineup might be trickier. The company made this trade-off deliberately to preserve battery life – a decision that made sense on paper but was less ideal when you actually needed to see details.
Interestingly, one reviewer noted the quality of the feed was 720p, so good enough to detect faces, sorta. Other sources consistently reported 640×480. Either way, we’re not talking about cinema-quality footage here.
The Homeboy security camera didn’t offer live streaming. By default, it recorded in 5-second clips when motion was detected, and would record another 5-second clip directly after if the moving object was still present. You could extend this to 30 seconds, but remember – longer videos meant more battery drain.
There was a 1-2 second delay from when it detected motion to when it started recording, which meant particularly swift burglars might have time to duck out of frame. That being said, have a read of the Rink Security Camera Review and you’ll realize that 1-2 seconds is incredible by todays Ring standards.
Your Homeboy security camera stored these clips in the cloud for 30 days, and you could download them to services like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Despite its compromises, the Homeboy security camera packed some genuinely clever features:
The Homeboy security camera was available for an introductory price of $149, with shipping beginning November 1, 2014. For 2014, this was competitively priced, you could find cheaper IP cameras, but the Homeboy’s unique feature set rendered it a powerful security tool for the money.
One reviewer who pre-ordered noted the camera was $189 in late 2015 (up from the $149 paid a year earlier), suggesting the price increased after the initial launch period. The Homeboy security camera also came with a 30-day return policy, provided you kept everything in pristine condition, and a one-year repair or replacement warranty.
If you watched the video above, you’ll notice that in 2013 the Doorbot (Ring) was $199, so by my standards it was a good price in 2014.
Compared to monthly monitoring fees charged by traditional security companies, the Homeboy security camera was a bargain. The company did plan to offer professional monitoring starting in early 2015 on a flexible, non-contract basis, giving users the option to subscribe only when needed, like during vacations.
According to early reviews, the Homeboy security camera was surprisingly functional. One reviewer reported everything worked pretty much flawlessly, bar an initial pre-launch hiccup that was fixed with a simple firmware update.
Another user who purchased the Homeboy security camera for package monitoring shared: “So far, I love the camera. I love that it’s portable, durable, and long-lasting. The app works great.” They did experience about one false alarm per day, possibly from leaves blowing on their porch, but found this manageable.
Again by modern standards, we dream of having one false positive each day. My Ring camera went off 20 times per day (in 2025!) unless I turned up the sensitivity features so high that it introduced about 5-10 seconds of delay.
The iOS and Android apps allowed users to arm and disarm the Homeboy security camera, adjust recording duration, enable audio recording, and manage all those Posse notifications. The interface was reportedly intuitive, and the setup process was straightforward – charge, connect to Wi-Fi, stick to wall, done.
However, the Homeboy security camera wasn’t without limitations. It had no option for live streaming or two-way talk features, meaning you couldn’t check in real-time or yell at intruders through the camera. For parents wanting to check on kids or pet owners wanting to talk to their animals, this was a dealbreaker. This was already a feature in the 2013 Doorbot (Ring).
In 2014, the Homeboy security camera faced stiff competition from established players like Dropcam (later acquired by Nest) and newcomers like Canary. While these competitors offered HD video quality and continuous streaming, they required constant power connections.
The Homeboy security camera carved out a unique niche by prioritizing portability and battery life over video quality and features. It was perfect for renters, people who wanted to move their camera around, or anyone who didn’t have convenient power outlets near monitoring locations.
However, as the smart home market exploded, companies like Ring, Arlo, and Blink entered the battery-powered camera space with improved technology. These competitors eventually offered better video quality while maintaining decent battery life, eating into the Homeboy security camera’s main advantage.
Despite its innovative features, the Homeboy security camera story didn’t have a happy ending. An update from October 2, 2019, reported that Homeboy was shutting down both its servers and its IFTTT service. The company directed U.S. users to download RemoteLync software as an alternative, with more information available from Homeboy’s partner Kidde.
Now when you navigate to the Homeboy website, you are redirected to the Kidde website which is also gone.
Why did the Homeboy security camera fail? Several factors likely contributed:
The answer is complicated. In 2014, the Homeboy security camera represented a genuine leap forward in thinking about home security. It solved real problems: expensive installation, the need for outlets, the hassle of drilling holes, and the isolation of monitoring your home alone.
Mark Richards proclaimed, “Everyone deserves home security and the freedom to customize their system to match their lifestyle. We built Homeboy to be open and accessible to all from day one.” This democratic vision was admirable, and the Homeboy security camera delivered on accessibility better than most competitors.
But “best” is subjective. If you valued portability and ease of installation above all else, the Homeboy security camera was arguably the best option in 2014. If you wanted crystal-clear footage and live streaming, it definitely wasn’t.
The Homeboy security camera was like that friend who’s incredibly fun at parties but never quite gets their life together. Charming, innovative, full of potential, but ultimately unable to adapt fast enough to survive in a brutally competitive market.
Even though you can’t buy a new Homeboy security camera anymore, its influence lives on. The idea of truly wireless security cameras is now standard. Magnetic mounts are common. Battery-powered cameras that last months are available from multiple manufacturers. The social monitoring feature, while not widely adopted, showed that home security didn’t have to be a solitary endeavor.
🔔 The Homeboy security camera proved that a small team with a good idea could challenge industry giants and as an Engineer myself, the idea that good technology can still beat corporate giants gives me a warm fuzzy feeling I can’t describe.
Was the Homeboy security camera the best security camera yet? For a brief, shining moment in 2014, it might have been. It certainly tried to be. The Homeboy security camera tackled genuine pain points with creative solutions, offered reasonable pricing, and built a community approach to home monitoring that was genuinely novel.
If you were lucky enough to snag a Homeboy security camera during its brief run, you owned a piece of smart home history. If you missed out, don’t worry – the Homeboy security camera’s best ideas have been absorbed into modern products that learned from both its successes and its shortcomings.
So raise a glass to the Homeboy security camera: ambitious, quirky, imperfect, and ultimately unable to escape the fate of most hardware startups. It tried to change home security, and for a while, it actually did. That’s more than most cameras can say.
Would I have bought a Homeboy security camera in 2014? Absolutely. Would I recommend buying one today? Well, good luck finding one that still works with its defunct servers.
In the end, the Homeboy security camera wasn’t just a product; it was a moment in time when someone looked at the home security industry and said, “We can do better.” And for a brief, battery-powered moment, they did.
Howdy folks, my name is Ben, a veteran in the ICT space with over 15 years of comprehensive experience. I have worked in the health sector, many private companies, managed service providers and in Defense. I am now passing on my years of experience and education to my readers.
