WiFi camera suggestions?

qwerty82 thought this was worth mentioning said Sun, Feb 4th 2018 at 1:28am ET

Hello - You folks here are often very nice and helpful so I thought I might pose a question I have been kicking around in my head for a while. I’m looking for a WiFi video camera that is not expensive. It doesn’t have to be the best quality or resolution. It would be for indoor use. I don’t know much about this area of tech so I am quite out of my element.

Do you folks have any recommendations?

Thanks!

4 comments
Comment

looseneck said Sun, Feb 4th 2018 at 7:26am ET:

My husband got me this one for Christmas:
Amazon Cloud Cam
Resolution is pretty good and set up is easy. He liked it so much when I set it up, he bought two more. It’s for watching our puppies during the day.
It goes on sale a lot, so if you don’t like the price, just wait a few days. They also have a 2 pack. You can set up 3 on the same wifi without having to pay a subscription.

0
- Reply
- Whisper
djslack said Sun, Feb 4th 2018 at 12:10pm ET:
Things to consider to narrow down your options:
- do you want to have to go through a cloud service to view/record or view directly from the camera? Cloud services can make remote viewing from outside the home easier but your video is going through a provider and you may have subscription fees.
- do you need pan, tilt, and zoom options or is a fixed view ok?
- is power accessible where you want the camera or do you need a battery operated or rechargeable model?
- do you need any kind of motion detection or recording functionality or just need to view on demand?
0
- Reply
- Whisper
ruouttaurmind said Sun, Feb 4th 2018 at 12:43pm ET:

As @djslack mentioned, there are many, many variations in this subject. The two most relevant questions IMHO: do you want to view the camera feed when you’re away from home/office (wherever the camera is installed)? Does it matter if the camera relies on “cloud” support? EDIT: One more capability to consider: do you want 2-way audio functionality?

I use two brands of wifi cameras in my home and office. Both brands rely on cloud services for initial setup, and remote viewing, but both have microSD card slots, and will record to the memory card whether or not they have local network or internet connections.

I have some inexpensive Zmodo 720p cameras, and some Wyze 1080p cameras. Overall capabilities are similar. The Zmodo 720p cameras were around $25 each, the Wyze 1080p cameras were $20 each.

If I were to add more cameras, I would probably choose more Wyze cameras. The company provides free 14 storage of recorded “events” (motion sensed, or sound sensed). Zmodo only provides 48 hours (though they offer a paid subscription for longer storage options).

You can check out the Wyze cameras here. $20 each plus shipping. They are also available on Amazon for about $26 with free Prime shipping.

2
- Reply
- Whisper
moondrake said Mon, Feb 5th 2018 at 10:54am ET:

I’ve been really happy with this $39.99 one: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0734HF88Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1.
You can use it without cloud storage, it takes an SD card.
But it only cost $60 for one year of cloud storage (stores one week of video, you can save stills and I think clips to your device). It has good video and sound, reasonably good night vision, and I can talk through it. It creates a log graph when it detects motion or sound, so it’s easy to go back and find where things were happening and watch that period. You can set it to alert your phone when it detects sound or motion (I had to turn the sound part off as I live in a busy neighborhood and got too many sound alerts). You can set it to sweep or leave it fixed and move it remotely. I have a “shotgun” house (named thusly as it is laid out straight and can be cleared with a single shotgun blast), so I have it at one end of the house and it can see 80% of the living area without moving. It was extremely easy to set up, once I had it plugged in and the app downloaded the camera told me what to do. Took about 5 painless minutes. Accidently cut its power once and resetting it was easy once I read how. You can run several devices through the same app, the company also sells outdoor cameras, window alarms, that sort of thing. I bought one of their outdoor cameras for $40 on EBay but havent installed it yet as I don’t have a usefully placed power outlet.

This thing has brought me a lot of peace of mind when I travel, as I can watch the pet sitter feed the dogs and know they are okay and being taken care of.

0
- Reply
- Whisper