I want to set up about 4 exterior and 2 interior cameras. Ideally, I'd like to be able to tap into them on my phone and whatnot. Two way talking is a nice feature, but not mandatory. Anyone have a setup going that they'd like to share?
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Security Camera folk, come help me find a good home set up.
- Thread starter Metanoia Prime
- Start date
Easiest and cheapest is the Blink which I use. Owned by Amazon. You buy each camera. Usually on sale for $80-90. I have one covering my front, one in the back and one in the house for when we are away.
It has motion detection, sound, night vision and free cloud storage. No wiring, just stick it up and connect to your wifi. AA battery lasts about 2 years. Less if you use it alot. It's also withstood a hurricane and humid summers already (Florida)
You view it through the app. It captures all motion and sound. Adjustable in the app. Quality is excellent, even the night vision. Can't say enough good things about it given the cost and ease of use. I use it to bust my son coming home at 3am when he was supposed to be earlier. He knows he can't avoid the Blink.
https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Blin...ds=blink&qid=1557341552&s=gateway&sr=8-1&th=1
Edit: Damn, looks like the Blink2 is coming out soon with 2 way sound. May need to swap them out.
Edit2: Can't embed this pic, but I took a snap of my phone screen showing recent activity. Didn't realize gardeners came today!
https://imgur.com/a/8xzS30X
It has motion detection, sound, night vision and free cloud storage. No wiring, just stick it up and connect to your wifi. AA battery lasts about 2 years. Less if you use it alot. It's also withstood a hurricane and humid summers already (Florida)
You view it through the app. It captures all motion and sound. Adjustable in the app. Quality is excellent, even the night vision. Can't say enough good things about it given the cost and ease of use. I use it to bust my son coming home at 3am when he was supposed to be earlier. He knows he can't avoid the Blink.
https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Blin...ds=blink&qid=1557341552&s=gateway&sr=8-1&th=1
Edit: Damn, looks like the Blink2 is coming out soon with 2 way sound. May need to swap them out.
Edit2: Can't embed this pic, but I took a snap of my phone screen showing recent activity. Didn't realize gardeners came today!
https://imgur.com/a/8xzS30X
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I don't have any camera set up, but a lot of my friends use Wyze. They don't have an outdoor camera yet (Which is what I'm waiting for) but there cheapest option is only $25. but there panning, 2 way audio camera is only $35. It has an app and everything.
OP
OP
Good stuff. Yeah, I was lookin at the Blink2 5 camera kit just now...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M98TFXZ/ref=twister_B07N86MCD2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Think that'd be a good deal? $379
I'll check that out, thanks. A cheap indoor camera is definitely welcome.
Yeah, $80 per camera is the typical sale price I think. Unless you want to try with one before you invest in 5.
I am looking for an indoor camera with two-way talk that I can use to monitor a disabled family member while I'm out of the house. I do not need video storage, motion detection, or other advanced features. I just want to manually check in and talk to this person periodically.
I'd appreciate any suggestions or recommendations.
I'd appreciate any suggestions or recommendations.
Old thread to bump, but I also recommend the first post for your use case. The Blink cameras are fairly inexpensive. I have a couple outside and one indoor to watch my dogs while I'm out. It has two way speaker, you can jump in whenever you want, but it also has some extra features like motion detection, infrared/night that you can enable if desired. You can have them wired or use batteries. Storage is all in the cloud, so you can use the Blink app to go through it and clean it out as desired, or save the video to your device.
Edit: Sorry, indoor one only has 1-way audio. The XT2 has 2-way audio.
I have 4 Swann cameras surrounding my house. The phone app is clunky, but otherwise they're pretty good.
There might be cheaper suggestions, but Nest has this kind of communication system. Basically, you can initiative communication from the app and then the mic transfers that back to the person talking. My wife frequently says hello when I'm getting the baby ready in the morning, seems to work pretty well. No subscription or anything, you do get ~6 hours of motion detection/history included with the cam & app, it works pretty well.
I use a Nest camera for my outdoor camera. It needs power, which can be an inconvenience when setting up, but because of that, it doesn't rely on motion detection to start recording, as it always records. I've seen reports that cameras like Arlo that rely on motion to initiate recording can end up just catching the back of someone's head if they come up and grabbed a package or something and run away really quick, so I was set on getting a camera that constantly records.
I pay for the Nest subscription, which isn't cheap, but it's nice to be able to view a full 10 days worth of 24 hour video. You can do two way talking from your phone with it and the motion and person detection is great and customizable. You can view live or historical feed anytime from your phone.
If you want a cheap option for indoor cameras, Wyze cameras are really cheap and do the job surprisingly well for the price. They can take an SD card to store 24 hours of recording and have basic motion and sound detection. It won't be as advanced as Nest, which is cloud based. Just like others, you can access the feed remotely via a phone app. I use one of their basic $25 cameras for our living room area to watch our dog while we're out and it works fine for that purpose.
I pay for the Nest subscription, which isn't cheap, but it's nice to be able to view a full 10 days worth of 24 hour video. You can do two way talking from your phone with it and the motion and person detection is great and customizable. You can view live or historical feed anytime from your phone.
If you want a cheap option for indoor cameras, Wyze cameras are really cheap and do the job surprisingly well for the price. They can take an SD card to store 24 hours of recording and have basic motion and sound detection. It won't be as advanced as Nest, which is cloud based. Just like others, you can access the feed remotely via a phone app. I use one of their basic $25 cameras for our living room area to watch our dog while we're out and it works fine for that purpose.
I use Meraki MVs, but then again, my entire home network is a Meraki stack. Cameras are powered over PoE and video feed/features is integrated with the dashboard for the rest of my network.
I'd look into Ubiquity cameras, OP:
I'd look into Ubiquity cameras, OP:
We use an older Lorex system around our small office building, and bundles of cameras/equipment are usually available for a decent price at Canadian Costco stores. It generally works fine, but after a small hardware failure (a fan broke down in the DVR, causing it to overhear & reset constantly) we tried working with their customer service and had an abysmal experience. Runarounds, oddly aggressive emails, and ultimately no support for hardware that's only around 5 years old. Do with this information what you will!
Wyze is great, I have a bunch of them, including ones I've set up outside the front and rear doors. You can buy a separate protective case for them and they work perfectly. I'm in Alberta and it's hella cold here, if they'll work here, they'll work anywhere.
Quality is decent, and inside I use cameras that can pan and scan, so I have great coverage to keep an eye on our pets during the day.
all controlled through the phone app, with motion, sound and person notification options. Also detects carbon monoxide. All stores to an SD card, so no need to bother with cloud saving and subscription fees.
Wyze are awesome.
Quality is decent, and inside I use cameras that can pan and scan, so I have great coverage to keep an eye on our pets during the day.
all controlled through the phone app, with motion, sound and person notification options. Also detects carbon monoxide. All stores to an SD card, so no need to bother with cloud saving and subscription fees.
Wyze are awesome.
Try Kuna from Amazon. One camera could be the front porch light and another in the back. They also have flood light cameras. Cheap, reliable, and recordings uploaded to the cloud. The cameras also detect movement and you can control the lights ( on, off, speak through, play recordings) through your phone.
i know this was originally an old thread, but I have a blink camera that's mentioned above and I'm not very impressed with it.
It's very basic, not great video quality, the AA lithium battery life is poor so any decent amount of traffic in the area you have it will kill battery life fairly quickly (the 2 year claim has to be under very very light use), a long delay and responsiveness when trying to pull up live video or when alerted to movement, and what few options it has (like zones for motion sensitivity) rarely work right.
I've been pretty impressed by what I've seen with Ring and am thinking about trying their stick up cam and moving the blink to the side of the house where nothing ever really happens.
It's very basic, not great video quality, the AA lithium battery life is poor so any decent amount of traffic in the area you have it will kill battery life fairly quickly (the 2 year claim has to be under very very light use), a long delay and responsiveness when trying to pull up live video or when alerted to movement, and what few options it has (like zones for motion sensitivity) rarely work right.
I've been pretty impressed by what I've seen with Ring and am thinking about trying their stick up cam and moving the blink to the side of the house where nothing ever really happens.
Picked up a couple of wyze cameras for 50 dollars. So far so good! I'm surprised by the video quality and you can add on board storage via 32 gig sd card.
I use the ubiquiti cameras because I like the software, they have a wide range of form factors/capabilities and I also use their network equipment/software (which is not integrated w/ the camera line)
The cameras are absurdly overpriced compared to competitors with the same internals though
Still, anything is better than a subscription camera. I'd never go back to that
The cameras are absurdly overpriced compared to competitors with the same internals though
Still, anything is better than a subscription camera. I'd never go back to that
I have two Arlo cameras for interior use (basically just for nanny cams). Love them. I think it was like $150 for both. Great app, free storage plans (though it's only like 2 months of saved history and only up to a certain storage size and I think a max of 3 minutes) and you can upgrade to more storage if you like. The options for triggering recording or alerts are pretty good. Picture quality is very good. Two way talk. They are kind of a pain to configure (for some reason the app has trouble finding the cameras sometimes, but it works after a few tries). They're perfect for my needs of just checking in on how things are going at home, and keeping an eye on movement alerts when I'm not around. They also do outdoor cameras too but I don't have any experience with those.
