We tried the $300 smart security camera that was cool enough to get on Apple's radar. Here’s what it was like to use. (AAPL)

• The Lighthouse security camera was a $300 internet-connected device that could identify you and your family members.
• But Lighthouse shut down its operations last December and sold its patents to Apple. Now, Lighthouse's founders and 20 of its staff are joining Apple, according to a report from The Information. 
• We tried the Lighthouse camera before the company shut down, and it provided a glimpse into the type of technology know-how the company will bring to Apple. 

Hardware startup Lighthouse had a straightforward goal with its first-ever product: make a home security camera that's smarter than anything else on the market.  

The result was the $300 Lighthouse camera, an AI-powered, internet connected smart security camera. It could identify you and your family members, alert you when there are intruders in your home, and understand commands like, "Did the dog walker come today?"

But Lighthouse never caught on with customers, and the company shut down operations last December. Since then, it has stopped selling its camera and sold some of its patents to Apple. Now, the company's founders and 20 of its staff are joining Apple, according to a report from The Information.

We tried the Lighthouse camera last year, well before the company shut down. While the camera is no longer available to buy, it's a solid indication of the type of technology the company's founders have brought to Apple. 

Here's how it worked:

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Lighthouse was founded in 2014 by Hendrik Dahlkamp and Alex Teichman, who met while working in Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun's lab at Stanford University. Lighthouse later joined Playground Global, an incubator run by Android creator Andy Rubin.

The Lighthouse camera was the startup's first and only product. When building it, Lighthouse wanted to "take a traditional camera and give it the eyes of a self-driving car, and give it the natural language understanding of a Google Assistant," Teichman told Business Insider.

Teichman described traditional security cameras versus the Lighthouse camera as "going from VCR to TiVo."