Nest Takes Its Dropcam Outdoors

ENLARGE

The Nest Outdoor Cam can stream live HD video feeds to smartphone and alert owners when people come into view. Photo: Nest Labs/Alphabet Inc.

Nest Labs is expanding its line of smart-home products to four from three Thursday with the Nest Cam Outdoor. The Alphabet Inc. GOOGL 1.00 % -owned company said the outdoor security camera is a direct response to feedback from users of Nest’s three other internet-connected devices—a thermostat, a smoke detector and an indoor security camera.

“We had a lot of Nest Cam Indoor users putting their cameras in windows and pointing them outside, but that doesn’t always help them see everything they wanted to see,” said Maxime Veron, Nest’s director of product marketing. “The demand for something like this is big.”

While the Nest Cam Outdoor is a new product, the components are largely similar to those in its indoor counterpart, the Nest Cam, now renamed Nest Cam Indoor. The Nest Cam first went on sale in 2015 as a refresh of the Dropcam Pro, built by Dropcam Inc., a startup that Nest bought in 2014.

Both Nest Cams stream 1080p video to iPhone and Android handsets running the Nest app, at a wide 130-degree viewing angle. Both offer a night-vision mode, and let users talk to whomever is on the other side of the camera using two-way audio. And both detect motion to alert users via the Nest app.

ENLARGE

‘Person alerts’ is a feature that will come to Nest Outdoor Cam, Nest Indoor Cam and Dropcam Pro. Photo: Nest Labs/Alphabet Inc.

The major difference between the indoor and outdoor cameras is the casing. The Nest Cam Outdoor can withstand dust, rain and snow, and both the camera housing and its power-outlet cable can be painted to match a home’s exterior. It comes with a mount that can be screwed into walls or attached magnetically.

Like its sibling, Nest Cam Outdoor will sell for $199; a two-pack will sell for $348. And it will use the same $10-a-month Nest Aware subscription service for 10 days of recording archived in the cloud.

The Nest Cam Outdoor will go on sale this fall, Mr. Veron said. When it does, both Nest Cams and the older Dropcam Pro models will have the “person alert” feature, which enables the cameras to detect when a person—instead of a cat, dog or car—has appeared on camera.

“Our cameras are getting smarter and better understanding what’s in front of them,” Mr. Veron said.

Write to Nathan Olivarez-Giles at Nathan.Olivarez-giles@wsj.com