Qualcomm wants to put its processors inside of security cameras

Qualcomm wants to power the next round of smart home cameras, and it hopes to make them even more capable in the process. To do that, Qualcomm has created a reference design for new home monitoring cameras, and at the core of them is its Snapdragon 618 processor. Though that isn’t one of Qualcomm’s powerhouses, Qualcomm says it’s a substantially more powerful processor than what’s currently inside of the average home camera. It can even run two cameras at a time. That additional power is supposed to allow these cameras to work a lot faster. Right now, Qualcomm says, a lot of cameras end up doing their processing in the cloud, which means you’re transferring a ton of data and wasting time between an event and any alert it might trigger. By putting a 618 inside of a camera, the camera should be able to do all image analysis locally, meaning far less delay between when an event happens — like someone opening a door — and when you get a notification about it.