Coming home to a find ones home burgled is something you never quite get over. While valuables can be replaced (provided you're insured), that sickening feeling of knowing a complete stranger has wandered through your home and violated your privacy can be a gut-wrenching experience.
Burglar alarms can make a hell of a lot of noise, and they'll usually scare away a burglar. More often than not however they'll just annoy the hell out of your neighbours. Monitored alarms are slightly more useful in that someone will actually turn up if the alarm is triggered, but false alarms can be hideously expensive.
This is precisely where the Eye 02 camera comes in. Essentially a surveillance camera with some pretty serious smarts, the Eye 02 uses a mobile network to alert you by sending a picture message to your phone when it detects someone who shouldn't be there.
Making use of a mobile network also confers the Eye 02 with an added side benefit - it is dead easy to install. Instead of running cable to a server or security system as you normally would with a conventional security system, the Eye 02 only needs a power source, a SIM card and mobile reception to do its thing.
Built-in smarts include a bunch of quite clever stuff. If the Eye 02 detects changes in it environment it'll alert you via SMS and send out a photo to your phone, allowing you and the police to potentially identify the burglars and get your stolen gear back without subjecting the neighbourhood to 120 decibel sirens.
The Eye 02 also comes with a handy remote for arming and disarming, and you can also text the Eye 02 simple commands to tweak settings or get a quick snap of what it is currently seeing (which I found to be a great way of seeing what my dog is currently up to - which funnily enough was mostly sleeping). At $990 the Eye 02 isn't cheap, but it is very pretty smart way of keeping an eye on your valuables that won't get you offside with neighbours.