@haydesigner One for each Bluetooth speaker, knife or quadcopter they’ve sold in the last couple years?

@jsh139

@mike808

@Yoda_Daenerys Not with this model. You can add a dome, but they will effectively become useless at night. The IR LEDs will reflect off the inside of the dome, making it a damned if you do… type situation.

@Yoda_Daenerys Maybe from within an enclosure… Would also need to solve for the IR LEDs not reflecting off of any window.

@jmckinl @hanzov69 perhaps i can just install it inside and take a shiny new photo of the creep once in the house?

@hanzov69 damned if you do, damned if you dome?

@harveydanger I need more stars for that joke.

@SkyyPunk ENHANCE

@Stallion Do you have a specific recommendation?

@Stallion Blue Iris was mentioned here earlier, although I preferred SurveillanceStation (more $$ than BlueIris) before switching over to ZoneMinder (open source freeness).

@Stallion I just bought a Zmodo stationary 720p cam so I can check on my garage door. The app sucks, but it appears it’s not possible to use an alternate app. Same deal with my Ring Doorbell Pro. They’re both heavily reliant on the manufacturers cloud services.

@ruouttaurmind Oh man, that was the part I was most chapped with… I bought one of the first Ring doorbells assuming I could grab the feed. Noooope.

Not to mention that half the time the app doesn’t even alert me to the bell press.

@Marion14505 I use mine mostly as Baby monitors, and nanny cam’s (without recording currently) so I use an iPhone app called “Baby Monitor for IP Camera or http://ipbabymonitor.com”. It has all the bells and whistles that let you set sound alert limits, can talk to the baby through the camera, monitor many different cameras, and so much more. Our $300+ Motorola monitor started collecting dust the day the $60 Foscam camera and this app showed up.

I’ve been wanting to set up Blue Iris or something else to record forever, just never got around to it.

@ruouttaurmind I can’t stand when manufacturers don’t allow you to use something non-proprietary. We are in a crazy time where all the cloud/smart home stuff is a hodge-podge that will be ready for the trash in a few years once more standards are reached. For now, early adopters at least get to have the cool stuff. Foscam doesn’t lock you in so you can do whatever, and use whatever, that’s a great value I’d say.

@hanzov69 I got the “HD” Pro version last month. Half the time it doesn’t record anything but a black screen and sound, and the other half of the time… The image it captures is more pixelated than my 640x480 DVR security cameras. Ring support is telling me it’s because I need minimum 4mbps upstream capability for the system to work reliably. 4mbps? Really? How inefficiently did they design the system anyway!

@hanzov69 hey yea, i’m comparing this to ring, how would you sum up?

@Stallion Fortunately I only paid $23 for the Zmodo, and I only use it to monitor the open/closed status of my garage door (I added a wifi module to my LiftMaster opener and I was apprehensive about trusting their sensor so I added the camera as redundancy). So for now, their crappy Zmodo app will suffice.

So as it is I have one app for my security camera DVR, another app for the Ring video doorbell, another app for the garage door opener, and another app for the Zmodo camera. Plus a separate email client app to receive the notifications and alerts. Too many apps! As you say, in a couple of years we’ll have more standardization, more integration, and we’ll see single source solutions for this stuff.

@Yoda_Daenerys I have the OG Ring, so my experiences may be different than @ruouttaurmind who has the new version… but…

The foscam vs Ring are two similar but ultimately different animals. The foscam is a cheap PTZ camera (splurge for the optical zoom), whereas the Ring is a doorbell with extra…ahem… bells and whistles.

If you are kind of a nerd at heart, the foscam is going to be up your alley. As others pointed out, they work with danged near every NVR/video software you can think of because they use standards protocols. With this in mind, if your goal is to know when someone is standing on your front porch… provided you mount the foscam somewhere it can see it and you have software running that does good motion detection, it’s going to beat the Ring, hands down.

Motion detection on the Ring is pretty hit or miss and it’s far from reliable for the remote notifications.

Tradeoff is the Ring is really good at actually seeing who’s at your door, this is due to the wide FOV on the lense and the location of the mount.

Additionally, Ring has cloud recording (which is non-free on my version, assume the same on the newer versions) which could be a nice feature if you don’t/can’t set up your own recording solution. I suppose that’s a pro or a con, depending on your perspective.

@stallion also raises a good point, which Ring is part of the IoT movement of nonsense, if they go out of busy or change their terms… too bad.

Foscam could disappear from the face of the earth, the product will continue to work until the hardware fails.
That said, Foscam US (distributor) is apparently pissy with Foscam (manufacturer) and isn’t supporting the cameras anymore, but that shouldn’t really be a big issue.

@Yoda_Daenerys, as @hanzov69 says, Ring is solely dependent on the company’s cloud services for it’s capabilities. This means if Ring doesn’t constantly upgrade their infrastructure to keep up with increasing customers/higher traffic volume, the system doesn’t work reliably.

As far as the paid cloud service that he mentions, Ring does provide a “light” service at no cost. It records and stores the last, I don’t remember, 24 hours of activity? I paid $30 for the annual subscription fee, which keeps my videos and activity on their server for I think six months. The ring keeps track of detected motion, and doorbell ring events, recording audio and video and storing it in the cloud.

Regarding motion detection, the HD pro version has a refined IR motion sensing as well as image based motion sensing, with definable fields. Motion detection on the pro is supposed to be quite a bit better than the older non-HD version.

FWIW, I would not make this purchase again. For $250 the system is wrought with issues. It is a shame, because I had very high hopes. According to Ring support, if you have a fast enough upstream Internet connection, all the problems I experience go away. 4mbps minimum according to Ring.

@ruouttaurmind hmmm, it’s making this impulse buy a little more attractive. Meh.be it is just 6 drinks attractive.

have you heard of the double-bagged approach?

sorry

/youtube ashamed

@hanzov69 I am having trouble setting up my Foscam. I understand they aren’t supporting it any longer. Why is that bit a big deal. Where can i get help?

@iansmeh What exactly are you having problems with? I can try and help (a little bit).

@hanzov69 It was a couple of weeks ago when I tried for the second time to set this up. The first time was over a year ago and i just gave up after hours of trying,which is exactly what happened this last time. I will try it again in the coming days and let you know exactly what the problem is. Thanks for the offer.

@hanzov69 ummm, wat?

@Yoda_Daenerys

1. Avoid using wireless if possible.
2. If you’re planning on putting multiple (more than two, we’ll say), consider bribing your local network nerd for help with the VLAN/subnet stuff.
3. Take some time to figure out how to change your routers UPnP / “Port Forwarding” settings. It’s a little bit of a pain, but a lot of these devices are very, VERY, insecure and will allow backdoors in to your home network. Best case, creeps on 4chan look at you walking around the house. Worst case, your home becomes part of a botnet that hurts the internet and possible steals your data / eggo waffles.

@hanzov69 Yeah, I’ve worked with a few of these in the past as well. They are definitely a great “cheap” option that maintain most of the bells and whistles of the more enterprise-grade solutions.

But I completely agree with the idea of controlling them tightly. In addition to running them on their own VLAN or subnet, I would lock their IP addresses, and then drop another firewall to limit which ports are open to them, and to which address they can talk… I have found a few in one system that I installed that were trying to use a few lesser used ports, and heaven only knows where they were talking. Foscam support (US - distributors) are aware of this, but currently unable to give any clear answers as to where the cameras are dialing out to exactly.

I don’t want any of my clients (or my home; perish the thought) becoming a peep show. It’s always a tough balancing act - Keeping things conveniently accessible from anywhere, but only to YOU. Great recommendations for a start! Thanks!

@hanzov69 You wouldn’t happen to have a link more step-by-step directions on how to set up cameras like this securely? I’d like to set up a couple around the house but would rather not let the creepers know how often my kids run naked around the house.

@jc283 Unfortunately, not really. There are just too many factors. Also, you absolutely cannot trust the settings on the camera to reflect reality.

Case in point: We used some no-name whitebox IP cameras for a work project, went through all the configs locking them down, but as a part of the project did a deep audit on the overall security. We were surprised that regardless of the settings on the camera, it would still try to open ports on the firewall and even did some hinky things with trying to tunnel out. Whether it was malicious or ill conceived design to “help” users I can’t say, but I wouldn’t trust these things as far as I could launch them with a trebuchet.

@Hanky Motion detection on these is pretty meh in my experience. Better to pipe it to an NVR type software with motion detection.

@mike808 I really like the subtle effects you achieved at 9:23:15. Very artistic.

@Marion14505 SPOILERS

@harveydanger they haven’t had a speaker dock in over a year. I’m on withdrawals man!
Tempt not a desperate man. Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone.

@uninflammable Save the security footage to the cloud (or otherwise off site.)

@shadow7118 There are two models for sale in this offering; FI9826 & FI9831…

-The FI9826 has had two iterations, of which the second is being sold. It has slightly different night vision than its predecessor of the same model number due to the IR LEDs being behind a shield, rather than out in the open, but is otherwise mostly an aesthetic change. It is easy to verify from the product images, as well as the size specifications in particular, that it is the v2. The major benefit from this model, however, is not just the updated looks, but the optical zoom (3x), if you use software that supports that function.

-The FI9831 is the one that has the older looking body style in the product images. However, I have used them in a few installations, and they theoretically perform about the same as the model above, and perhaps a bit faster in the pan/tilt/zoom functions. The one particular benefit to this model is that since there have not been two revisions, so of the software that you may want to use to integrate this into your new (or existing) home security system may have fewer potential compatibility issues.

Regardless of which you choose (both are fine, especially if you have some decent tech savvy about you, or access to a friend/family member), PLEASE be sure to find alternate software to manage these. There are plenty of iOS and Android options for a few dollars, or there are desktop options that range from free to about $60 (BlueIris, with enough license room for up to 64 cameras).

@arosiriak WOW, that’s cool… thank you for the information… esp since I cheaped out and opted for 2 of the FI9831’s. (one each color) I thought they’d be fun to experiment with. I already have an Iris system w/cams… but no panning options… I know these are most likely not Iris compatible, but I thought I could experiment… I actually had second thoughts… (esp with the vulnerability concerns) but feel better after seeing your post… I envision I’ll need to come up with some sort of firewall protection other than our (new) U-verse router offerings…

@bloewy looks like it

@bloewy That’s ok, they were $38 on Meh back in September (the currently $45 version). Guess I’ll wait for the next Meh sale?

@slipperyp These function far more like the old ones… Both a positive, and a negative. However, I have installed some systems with the 9821s and 9831s in tandem, and they seem to work fine with the software I’ve used.

From what I’m seeing, the R2 is the newest “consumer” version, that has made an attempt to become easier to set up, which ultimately means weaker, and less secure. Personally, I have been leaning toward the 9826 model, as it is the second revision, which seems to have been slightly more reliable, if a tiny bit slower on its pan/tilt/zoom movement.

Hope that helps!