Silk Labs have announced the ‘Sense’ smart security camera, a device designed to compete with the likes of the Nest Cam.

What differentiates the Sense camera from its competitors is the inclusion of a smartphone-grade Qualcomm processor. This allows the device to do more than simply provide a video feed.

According to Andreas Gal, Silk Labs founder and former Mozilla CTO, the CPU will grant the Sense abilities such as individual human face and pet recognition as well as specific sound recognition, such as a window breaking.

The device will also be capable of interfacing with third-party hardware, such as Sonos speakers and smart light bulbs. With these pairings, the device will be able to visually recognise an individual and automatically change the lighting to their preferences and play their favourite music.

The company is also launching a software development kit for developers to build smarter home IoT products.

Gal said that despite the release of the Sense smart camera, the ultimate objective of Silk Labs is for device makers to adopt his company’s OS for new IoT devices.

“Every IoT device maker builds their own software, but these are hardware companies,” he said in a statement.

“They don’t have the software expertise to do complex neural networks and machine learning.

“We’re trying to fill that gap.”

Silk Labs has raised $US2.5m in seed round funding and have launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Sense camera, with estimated shipping of devices to occur near the end of the year.