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Honeywell, a 111-year-old company, to launch home security system on Indiegogo

Honeywell, a 111-year-old company, to launch home security system on Indiegogo

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Honeywell security system tease
Image: Honeywell

Honeywell, a multinational conglomerate founded 111 years ago that currently has 132,000 employees and a market capitalization of over $109 billion, is today announcing that it would like you to preorder its next product on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The new product is a DIY home security system that buyers will be able to install and monitor on their own, instead of relying on professional monitoring and installation, as with past Honeywell products.

Indiegogo has been courting big brands over the past couple years in an attempt to make launches like this happen on its platform. That’s fine when you look at Indiegogo as primarily a sales platform — which, at this point, it very much is — but the pairing still makes the idea of crowdfunding seem farcical. Honeywell clearly has the money and resources to develop and produce a product all on its own, but it’s heading to a crowdfunding platform in order to build hype and increase sales. Plenty of products that can’t find an audience in stores will flourish on crowdfunding platforms, and Honeywell seems to be hoping it can tap into that audience to drive early orders.

What’s crowdfunding for in 2017?

Honeywell tells The Verge that it wants to launch on Indiegogo because the site’s community provides “very valuable feedback” on products. “We can engage, look for new features, and improve the product based on that first launch via Indiegogo,” said a Honeywell representative.

We don’t actually know what the smart home system is like yet. Honeywell began teasing it today with the image above, which it’s emailing out to customers. It sounds like the product will compete with Nest, Ring, and other smart home companies that have been moving into this space. Unlike those systems, however, Honeywell says it won’t be offering a professional monitoring option at all.

From the looks of it, the system will be based around a camera with an integrated alarm, a lot like Canary. It’s supposed to launch on Indiegogo on November 1st.