Could anyone suggest a good home security camera that would call my phone if there is a problem? I was looking at the Canary on Amazon, but people said they start charging you a monthly fee after a trial period. I don't travel often, but when I do it would be nice to have a way to keep an eye on things.

We just bought the Blink 3 pack for the outside. They have inside cameras for about $10 less than the exterior.

They are battery powered wireless cameras and supposedly no contracts and connects to your phone. They just came in the mail today so I haven't set them up yet.

everyone will have different advice on this. Some advice is better than others.

But what I did was buy a copy of Blue Iris software and placed 6 Hikvision cams (with updated firmware) inside and out. I get texts upon motion detection.

But for one cam, the solution may differ.

Mrs. 'Hook has Nest cameras in her father's rooms at the Assisted Living facility. Each camera dings her phone to alert her of new movement in each room. Nest does charge a fee after 30 days, and she selected the 5-day look-back option. The first camera is $50/year and each subsequent camera is an extra $30.

I've been impressed with the quality of the picture even in low light - a salt lamp in the corner provides perfect night time lighting for the cameras. We can hear the audio adequately enough to understand the conversation happening in the room, but she's been told the talk-back feature is barely audible when she's tried to talk to people in the room. She had AT&T install a dedicated WiFi just to run the cameras and provide her internet access when she's there every day for 6-8 hours.

Overall it's been a pretty good solution for her situation. Her father has advanced Parkinson's and is on Hospice, so she can keep an eye on things 'round the clock without having to live there too.

Would Dropcam (I think it is now called nest camera) be something along the lines of what you're looking for. Is cloud based (though I expect they charge a yearly rate), so accessing the streams and setting up alerts I would assume are possible.

Costco sells a wireless camera system by Arlo - but I know nothing about it.

One important thing for me is an encryption that would prevent most people from hacking into it. The last thing I want is someone having a free view into my home and determining I'm not there.

I'm fine paying a fee if the system is worth it.

I'm looking into the Nest, but this is the Canary I spoke of in the OP. It supposedly has night vision and environmental monitoring. I'm trying to find out if that means fire or air quality.

https://canary.is/canary/

My grandmother has the Arlo system. I have her account info so I can check in on her and it's been pretty good so far.

Arlo.com

I have several of the Arlo Q cameras for inside the house. They are not perfect but they have been pretty good and I have not found a better option.

https://www.amazon.com/Arlo-NE...quired/dp/B017B2043W

They are wired for power so no battery changes required.

These cameras connect directly to your wifi network and do not require a base station. This is important if you have wifi repeaters to get good coverage in your house as that would require multiple separate base stations if the camera relied on them.

You can have up to 5 cameras all linked though one email account and accessed from a single app without any monthly fees.

Lots of options for motion and sound sensing, when to record, and what to do once motion/sound is detected such as sending you an email.

It stores up to 7 days of recorded videos for free with no monthly fee. It's easy to download a video if you want to keep it.

The app is pretty good and it's easy to access the cameras and change settings from your smart phone.

The downside is that sometimes viewing recorded videos is buggy. Netgear appears to be slow addressing the bugs. Overall these have been a good addition and have worked well for a couple years.

I’m really impressed with our Nest cameras. The night vision is really good.

Plus, I enjoy the notifications of sound/movement that are sent to my phone.

Two way speaker is cool too.

Great timing for this thread as I just started thinking about installing a camera or two in my house and shop.

My neighbor has the Blink system and loves it and can pull stuff down onto his phone, gets alerts, etc. I installed Dropcam/Nest cameras at our old church and they worked well most of the time. However we had issues with static surges on our router courtesy of TWC and that in return caused connection issues. Arlo is another system along with Amazon you might want to consider. There is a large t of competition right now, I’m curious who will be around in 5-10 years.

I have the Arlo Q models here and in NY and Brett B summed them up pretty well. For my purposes they do the job well.

LOREX technologies....

I've been using one of these Amcrest cameras for a while and found it very reliable.

https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest...ywords=amcrest&psc=1

There's a newer version that is 3MP for a few bucks more.

Being in the business I tend to turn my nose up on the Consumer efforts in this area.
However, the Netgear aka Arlo is a massive success in this area and by far the biggest market share.
Could be the customers are afflicted by the same Zombie mentality of IPhone users or maybe they actually captured a niche.
YMMV

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Being in the business I tend to turn my nose up on the Consumer efforts in this area.
However, the Netgear aka Arlo is a massive success in this area and by far the biggest market share.
Could be the customers are afflicted by the same Zombie mentality of IPhone users or maybe they actually captured a niche.
YMMV

Pretty sure I’m not a zombie. I simply looked at the competing options and haven’t found anything better for my use than the far from perfect Arlo Q. Maybe you can give some suggestions?

Nest:
Requires a monthly subscription to download videos and to enable filtering for motion sensing to minimize the false positive emails. I’m not paying an open-ended monthly fee just to get basic usability, so Nest is out.

Blink:
Runs off of batteries requiring frequent changes depending on how you have motion sensitivity setup. If you use live view often (as I do), runs the batteries down even faster. Requires a base station that limits the range of installed cameras. 2 of my Arlo Q cameras are far enough away from the primary router (where the base station would go) that they need to connect through my access point wifi extender.

Canary:
Had lots of good features but now requires a monthly subscription service to maintain even the most basic items. A big time bait and switch. No thanks.

DVR based hard-wired system:
I installed an 8-camera hard wired Alibi system for my outside cameras. It works great and has been trouble free for years. No monthly fees required, sends me motion detect emails, can review videos or live-view through their app, and stores videos locally. It does not have the flexibility for remote changes to the settings while using a smart phone that the Arlo system does. The labor to install this system and pull all the wires was substantial. I was not at all interested (and frankly didn’t have the time) for that much labor for just a few inside cameras.

Blue Iris run off of a PC:
I would have needed to purchase a PC and leave it running all the time just to use this system. It would have been the most expensive option by far when looking at the hardware I needed to purchase. It also would have been another substantial time investment for all of the hard wiring work just like my DVR system.

What other options should I look at for a few interior cameras that have the following features?

Wired for power
Wifi for signal
No base station
No monthly subscription fees to save videos and manage settings
User friendly smart phone app to view videos, live view, manage settings and record schedules

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Brett B,

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Being in the business I tend to turn my nose up on the Consumer efforts in this area.

I generally feel the same. Was just discussing this kind of thing with the guy over at one of the two places I buy most of my lawn and yard power equipment." He said something like "People simply don't understand. Once you go commercial you can't go back. The difference is that great."

All of my lawn and yard power tools are commercial stuff, save the trim mower and electric hedge trimmers. (And those electric hedge trimmers are about to be replaced with a commercial product.)

The problem I have with higher-end video surveillance systems is the cost. It is flat-out prohibitive, to me.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
However, the Netgear aka Arlo is a massive success in this area and by far the biggest market share.

It does seem to be the least-worst of the available products in its category.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Could be the customers are afflicted by the same Zombie mentality of IPhone users or maybe they actually captured a niche.
YMMV

Or, like iThings users, they've simply identified the Best Of Breed

The show stopper for me, as I've noted, is the separate, dedicated wireless hub. The Arlo Q does not require it. I'm hoping they come out with more like it.

Canary is good, can record 1080p,and this doesn't look like a camera at first. MyBut based on experience, my Canary before had sensor problems. Since it requires monthly fee now, it'd be better to consider the high end ones like the arlo.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JakiHere,

We have the Arlo Pro system at our house and really like it.