Piper Camera Offers Home Security through Your Smartphone (VIDEO)

The Piper home security camera is now selling on its website for $240.

Available in white or black, the simple but effective device allows you to monitor what's happening in your home remotely through your smartphone, Yahoo Tech reported.

Piper, which can be placed on a shelf or mounted on a wall or the ceiling, is unique for its 180-degree lens that can scan the entire room. Compatible with both iPhone and Android, Piper lets you scroll up and down as well as right and left and allows for zooming in up to 10X.

The camera feed can also be divided into four sections on your phone's display, where you can zoom in on each part of the room individually.

Completely independent of a computer, Piper simply needs a Wi-Fi network and a smartphone for setup. Unlike other home security systems, it takes only a one-time payment with no monthly fees.

Depending on your security concerns, you can program different rules into Piper to get calls or notifications by text whenever the device picks up movement or loud noises. It also responds to temperature and brightness, so you can program it to alert a neighbor if there is a drastic drop in temperature.

As we move toward the Internet of things, the Piper camera is especially innovative for its compatibility with Z-Wave gadgets, home accessories including alarms, thermostats and light switches that can be automated.

In one example, Piper can work with such devices as the Z-Wave door sensor to trigger a "deafening" siren when a window or door is opened or closed, according to Yahoo Tech.

The camera can be bought in a package that also comprises three Z-Wave devices for $360.

With all the fancy technology available today, Piper stands out for its streamlined and dependable functionality, according to Yahoo Tech's David Pogue.

"I can't stress this enough: What makes the Piper terrific is not that it can do all that it does. It's that it does all that simply and reliably," Pogue wrote. "It's technically home networking, but you'd never know it. It works."