Ah! The nineties. It was a simpler time back then, wasn’t it? Back in the days we old folk, all watched Home Alone, where a little boy named Kevin McCallister turned his house into a nightmarish carnival of pain and humiliation for a couple of hapless burglars.
Paint cans were swinging, BB guns were firing, tar-covered stairs stuck them like bugs on flypaper…
Kevin was the blueprint for DIY home security.
But what if Kevin didn’t have to rely on his Rube Goldberg-esque creativity? What if he had access to PaintCam Eve, the unholy spawn of Robocop, John Wick, and Banksy….Eve is not your typical daddy’s Ring camera. It is the apocalypse posing as a harmless bluetooth-enabled home device with a user-friendly interface.
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Let me paint (pun intended) you a picture.
You’re sitting at work, enjoying a lukewarm cup of corporate coffee, when your phone buzzes. It’s Eve, your ever-vigilant “guardian”, who is sending you a notification that an unfamiliar, rather vague figure has made their way onto your property.
But you don’t worry, because you won’t have to lift a finger…. Eve has already issued a polite warning to the intruder, or perhaps something more akin to ED-209’s “You have 20 seconds to comply” schtick.
Say the intruder decides to test fate, well, let’s just say Eve chooses violence. She has a whole arsenal at her disposal consisting of paintball pellets and tear gas rounds. The home security game just got a lot of fun, and double trouble for the trespasser.
Let’s talk about the name now: PaintCam Eve.
So innocuous, so friendly, like something you would find in a toy aisle. But you shouldn’t be fooled by the harmless branding. This thing is one part supersized arcade game, one part defense drone.
It is packing facial recognition and AI decision-making, which let Eve marks her targets with the precision of a sniper and the enthusiasm of a caffeinated FPS gamer. Strangers are met with a flurry of high velocity paintball rounds. And they are color-coded to mark intruders for police identification. That is of course, if you are feeling charitable. Otherwise, Eve has got tear gas projectiles in her arsenal. Why bother with restraint when you can go full Armageddon!
And the best part is that it’s all controlled via a smartphone app.
Lose internet connection is not a problem, because all algorithms run locally (Edge). So in that case Eve is happy to go rogue and act autonomously. Nothing says “relax, you’re safe” like an armed, trigger-happy and independent-thinking robot that is autonomously deciding who’s friend or foe. Imagine explaining that to the cops when Eve mistakes your Uber Eats driver for an intruder and paints them like Jackson Pollock gone rogue.
Eve’s creators are very proud of her. They say that she is “a vigilant guardian that doesn’t sleep, blink, or miss a beat”.
Let me translate …. Eve is a control freak who doesn’t understand the concept of “oops”. She will notify you when a stranger appears on your property, but the real fun begins if you decide to give her free rein. She can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces, and even recognize pets, assuming, of course, you have trained her well enough not to splatter the neighbor’s cat. Got chickens and a fox problem? Eve will make damn sure the fox ends up questioning its life choices somewhere amidst a hail of paintballs. I just hope she doesn’t mix up your niece’s golden retriever for a feral beast.
But these are not all the tricks she has up her sleeve. The other bells and whistles are: Night vision, object tracking, movement detection, video storage.
All standard for a security camera.
But none of that really matters, does it.
Because deep down, you are only here for the chaos. You are not interested in “customizable alerts” or “playback features”. Nah, you just want to witness Eve in hardcore action, when she is turning your porch into a red paint-splattered battlefield.
Admit it!
The footage of your ex walking up to the door with a subpoena in hand, taking a paintball to the forehead would be worth every penny.
Now, before you whip out your credit card, let’s address some ethical “dilemmas”.
Ok, is it a questionable act to use tear gas on a door-to-door salesperson who has ignored your “no soliciting” sign ?
Absolutely not!
Is it legal?
Probably not.
But hey, I say, what’s life without a little legal gray area.
And if Eve accidentally blinds the neighborhood kid playing hide-and-seek, well, that’s what insurance is for.
The good news is, that you’ll soon have the chance to bring this mechanized mayhem into your life. because PaintCam is launching a Kickstarter campaign, and they are promising to reveal more specs, and hopefully some epic slow-motion videos of a perp taking a round between the eyes.
Until then, I would like you to think about this life’s question:
Are you really ready for a world where a home security systems doubles as a combat robot?
Will burglars think twice about breaking in, or will they start wearing paint-resistant suits like they’re prepping for a paintball tournament? And what happens when someone inevitably hacks Eve and turns her into a sentient paintball assassin?
Welcome to the future of AI infused hardware, peeps.
It is loud.
It is messy.
It’s slightly terrifying.
And it’s always on target.
Kevin would be proud.
Signing-off from the set of Hard Home (2024),
Marco
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