Hello and thanks in advance for any advice you can provide. I have cable Internet with wifi in the house, and I am looking for a reliable WIFI video camera to set up in a room where I think my dog hangs out when I am not home so I can use an app on my android phone to see him during the day when I am work. I don't need an extensive system or something that has too many features. I just want it to work, reliably. Pan-tilt-zoom would be nice, but is lower priority than reliability. Two-way audio would be nice, but lower priority than reliability.

I've looked on Amazon and Costco.com and all of the cameras look fine for the most part, but all of them have lots of lousy reviews, including things like the camera getting un-synched from the router often, etc.

No MAC stuff; the computers are PC's and the phone is Android.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks again.

Petzi does fine, but doesn't pan / tilt.

I have another coming in a few weeks to try.

I've been very happy with my Arlo cameras

I recently put in an Amcreast 841 Wirless IP camera and I'm satisfied with it for what it is.

It has all of the features you mention and has a wide field of view and reasonable night vision. I have mine set up to record only with motion detection and have it programmed to be off when we are home. Changing the motion detect schedule is easy. With a 32 gb SD card installed there is plenty of record space for this set up and I don't even use the free cloud storage that Amcreast offers. If you just want to look in via Live View, you won't even need to record. A little be of a learning curve, but the average PC/Smart phone person can grasp it pretty quickly. There are lots of other options out there with similar features... this is just the one I settled on.

^^^^^^^^
This
I have one in my living room that has lasted 2 years without a hitch. $80 on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest...1&smid=AM1AKWRN957PC

I have a Foscam in my owl box so I can watch the owls. It is the FI9821P model. Has night vision/pans/tilts, etc. Was around 65.00 on Amazon. Really like it and it can be watched on all my Apple products.

Thanks for the advice.

I am a little leary of getting one of these, although I do want to see what the dog is up to when I'm not there. I had tried to use one of those RING WIFI video doorbells a few years ago and had a lot of trouble with it losing the wifi often and having long delays in sending to my phone. I have a better router now, and I think some of their trouble with RING was the android app was not working well. So, maybe the camera will work OK, I can try it I guess. Amazon is good at taking stuff back if it does not work.

Again, I have had 4 Amcrest cameras on my Wi-Fi network for years without any problem. I recently updated my router from an AirPort Extreme to an Orbi 3 unit system.

We had the Dropcam(by NEST) for my Dad at his assisted living. My techie brother set it up, seemed fairly easy. We did do the paid service to be able to capture video past the stated free time. Past that I don't know much on the particulars other than it seemed simple to use...

Another vote for Amcrest for your needs.
Anything more than 1 camera their program is a bit wonky but for a lone camera it is great.

I have a couple Ring stick up cameras that have worked perfectly and there's no reason they couldn't be used inside. Arlo has an indoor cam that seems to be pretty good too. I'm planning on getting one of those to put in my garage just to compare to the Ring.

Arlo is great because the are wireless and you can move them if necessary or temporarily. Easy setup as well.

quote:

Originally posted by sig77:
Arlo is great because the are wireless and you can move them if necessary or temporarily. Easy setup as well.

Can the Arlo be plugged in??
He is wanting to watch the dog that thing would suck the batteries.

I'll order one of the Amcrest ones. The Amazon page for them has some video reviews by users and one of those is pretty thorough, goes over set up, etc. I would need to plug the camera in so it can send live feed to a smartphone app for me to look at whenever I want to see what the dog is doing. He probably sleeps a lot, which means he would not trigger the motion-activation feature of a camera very often.

quote:

Originally posted by valleyforge.1777:
I'll order one of the Amcrest ones. The Amazon page for them has some video reviews by users and one of those is pretty thorough, goes over set up, etc. I would need to plug the camera in so it can send live feed to a smartphone app for me to look at whenever I want to see what the dog is doing. He probably sleeps a lot, which means he would not trigger the motion-activation feature of a camera very often.

You can shut the motion trigger notifications and recordings off if you like.
Not being a security thing no issues just doing live view.

This model is 69.99 on Amazon if you use coupon code CPDM4S9K
Amcrest IP2M-841 ProHD 1080P (1920TVL) Wireless WiFi IP Camera, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014...cp_api_b6T1zb67PF3TM

This one 54.99 on Amazon with code E96K3WKA
Amcrest HDSeries 720P WiFi IP Video Security Surveillance Camera, Plug/Play, Pan/Tilt, Two-Way Audio & Night Vision IPM-721B (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F...cp_api_E9T1zbV33F0RN

Whichever fits your needs better

It'd be more fun if you had one of the cameras that attached to his collar to see what he is doing.

quote:

Originally posted by valleyforge.1777:
I'll order one of the Amcrest ones. The Amazon page for them has some video reviews by users and one of those is pretty thorough, goes over set up, etc. I would need to plug the camera in so it can send live feed to a smartphone app for me to look at whenever I want to see what the dog is doing. He probably sleeps a lot, which means he would not trigger the motion-activation feature of a camera very often.

You will need to get a micro SD card to facilitate local recording. It does not come with the camera. So if you don't have one you might want to order it at the same time. It's hard to find the specs, but 32 gb is the max size and this will give you a lot of recording space which of course is dependent on the resolution etc you have the unit set at. With factory default settings a 32gb card would give you many hours of recording space which will take quite awhile to reach if you're recording motion activated only. It will then just start over writing from the beginning. I've had mine installed for a little over a month and have it set to the highest resolution and image quality. I'm up to 5% usage on the SD card.

Thanks for the advice. Using Black92LX's link and coupon code, I got one of the Amcrest 1080p cameras and I saved $10. Then, I paid $7 extra for Saturday delivery, which of course was actually delivered on Sunday. Anyway I got it set up using the android app and it is working well. I will see how it goes today when I am work. I think I know which room my dog hangs out in while I am at work, and I should know by later today, via the WIFI camera. I did not try setting it up with the laptop and ethernet cable yet, but I need to do that at some point to update the firmware. I did try using the PC web based interface (www.amcrestview.com) to see the camera, but I can not get it to work. Will try one more time on my computer at work, but at least at home it is not working. The required plug in will not load for Firefox since the browser says the file is corrupt (yes, tried downloading it multiple times), and it does load the viewing frame for Internet Explorer, but the video does not show up at all. Google Chrome is not usable for the site, as per the manufacturer. But the app does work, well, so far and that's fine. I will let you know how it goes. thanks very much for the great advice. I knew the Sig Forum crowd would come through.

This is the one I have for my dog. Works great. Just log on to the app. You can even talk to him through it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d...ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sorry, I mentioned it in another thread and just quickly hit on it in this thread earlier.
Amcrests mobile app works great with 1 camera and gets wonky with more than one. Their PC programs are complete and utter garbage and as you have found out Amcrestview is completely unusable!!
I have sat on phone support (which is actually very good and responsive for most things) and no one is able to get the plugin to load on any browser. Their customer support has even remoted into my PC and could not get it up and running.
They ended up installing the Amcrest Surviellence Pro program but it is not very good.

I'll be adding more cameras and don't want to be locked into Amcrest cameras so I tried quite a few IP camera programs and ended up with Blue Iris and am quite happy with it. Has a little bit of a learning curve but if I can do it anyone can.

http://blueirissoftware.com

I downloaded the evaluation version used it for awhile then bought it on Amazon for $15 cheaper than the Blue Iris site. The mobile app is and extra $10. But there are no monthly or extra fees and will support 64 cameras.

The main issue I had with the Amcrest mobile app on iOS was I would have to completely close out the program and restart it or it would not connect to the camera.