Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

I give this more of a 3 1/2 stars…

I recently began looking into home video surveillance and home automation and acquired some products from a different manufacturer that lets you control video, thermostats, doors, lights, etc.. through a smartphone. My issue with that set of products is the need for monthly subscription to use it as well as the high prices of the components. I was very excited when I got the opportunity to try the Belkin video camera as it was cheaper and does not require a monthly subscription. Sure, it doesn’t have all the home automation features that the other system has but I was more concerned with the video monitoring anyway. Overall I am pleased with how it works but there is definitely room for improvement.

Getting the camera up and running was actually quite easy and did not require me to hook it up to a computer or my home router. I simply connected it to my phone as a wifi connection, followed the instructions and then flipped a switch on the back of the camera to go into video mode. The app I downloaded to control it was for my Iphone 4S. Initially, when the first picture came up I was terribly disappointed in the quality. It looked like complete haze. That’s when I realized that the box had been outside for a while and the lens was simply covered in fog. I wiped it down and it looked much better.

The video quality while viewing it over a wi-fi network on my Iphone was very good. The camera angle is very wide so I can get a good portion of my first floor including my front door. You can modify the quality of the video through the app so if you have less bandwidth, it will send a lower quality stream. However, even at its best quality, its only 640×480. Over a 3G connection, I had to manually turn down the video quality in order for it to be displayed but I didn’t really notice much of a degradation in quality. Guessing it’s because the iphone screen is so small that it really doesn’t matter.

Here are the things I like about the camera

1. Cheaper than others I looked at. Compared to the Nexia line of cameras, this is priced much better
2. No subscription required to use it
3. Quality is about as good as the Nexia ones I use
4. Night vision is pretty good. All black and white but pretty clear
5. Sound!!!! Yes, this has the ability to stream audio as well which my nexia camera does not
6. Recording to the Iphone rather than some cloud server that limits your space
7. Like my more expensive solution, this does e-mail alerts based on motion

Here are the things that can be improved

1. The video is severely delayed and choppy. This does not produce “real time” video like the nexia and seems to only capture a frame or two every few seconds regardless of what type of connection I am on
2. Manual adjustment is annoying. This seems like it could be an easy update to the app to allow the app to automatically adjust the quality settings when bandwidth is limited. Waiting for a a minute or two and then getting a “sorry” message is annoying. Please build in auto adjust for this.
3. Load times can be long compared to other camera I have.

Like I said, more of a 3 and a half stars with the ability for this to be a 4 star if they can improve the video fps and the bandwidth detection. If those can be addressed either in software or a newer camera, this could be my solution for video surveillance around my house. Will be a lot cheaper than paying a monthly fee for something that does the same thing!

I’ll start with what is good about this camera:
1. Small, reasonably well built.
2. Good night vision. I can see across the room for about 20 ft in total darkness.
3. Easy set up: hint…when setting up, put the camera as close to your wifi router as possible. The signal strength is poor, and it can take for ever to connect, and usually doesn’t connect at all. Other than that, set up is as simple as can be.
4. With good connection, the camera is very stable. I’ve had it running 24/7 for a week now without issue.
5. Motion detector image capture…email notification works well.

Why I wouldn’t use this camera?
1. Wifi strength is poor. I’m placing it 50 feet away, granted there are 2 interior walls in between, and signal drops off constantly.
2. Although the camera does have an ethernet port, the port is non-functional…compounding the weak wifi signal issue.
3. Software sucks… You can’t view the camera on a computer. You must use their iphone app. The app sucks. Worse of any camera app out there. First off, it crashes all the time. Second even on 4g LTE it has a hard time pulling videos through. I’d have to downgrade the video quality substantially to get a video connection. Third is it hardly works on Ipads…crashes more often than on the iphone.
4. Worse, most irritating part is that this camera is proprietary. You can’t view the camera with Blue iris or any other app/program. This makes point #3 even worse. I’m not an expert by any means, but I simply can’t get this camera to behave like a typical IP cam.
5. Poor value. This camera doesn’t tilt, pan, or zoom….for 0 bucks I’d go elsewhere.

What would I recommend? I now have done a ton of research and own 2 other systems…the Foscam 8910 and the Logitech Alert. Here’s my opinion of the 3 system for what it’s worth:

1. My favorite is the Logitech Alert. You want this if you have a newer house with normal electrical wiring. By that I mean not spliced, added on, modified, etc. The construction quality is best of the 3 by a mile. Image quality during day, dim, and dark times are the best by far. Set up is simple and brainless. Signal connection and stability is much better than wifi. Open architecture means you can view your camera through VLC, Blue iris, etc…so if Logitech goes belly up, your camera is still functional. What I don’t like about the Alert system is that there is no tilt/pan/zoom….false advertisement. The software only support 6 cameras, although you can view more if you use Blue iris. The app does suck, but you can use Blue iris which works great on both iphone and ipad. These are more expensive (hint….much cheaper if you use the ‘configure’ option on Logitech’s site)but are the best out there.

2. Foscam is pretty good. Image quality is on par with the Belkin. There’s true tilt and pan, the ethernet port works, stable, fast, and the software and flexibility is just unbeatable.