Hello All!
Can anyone please recommend a good, simple security camera that allows simply recording to a computer, and not, to the cloud which incurs ongoing costs?
I have the Logi Tech Circle II camera, which seems to work satisfactorily in my situation, but now that I’ve had time to play with it over the past week, I’d like to avoid the ongoing monthly costs of recordings being sent to the cloud.
Thanks,
Bill Taylor
I’ve had a lot of fun with WyzeCam:
The cloud service is included in the price of the camera (no ongoing fees) or you can put an SD card in the camera and avoid the cloud altogether.
As far as I know, you cannot record directly to a computer.
–Ron
I love Wyze. They perform far better than those cameras I have used in the past. There is no cost for the recordings. Recordings are saved to your SD card in your camera. They can be saved to your photos app.
Reliability is number one for me. The other cameras have not been as reliable.
I have yet to find a cost effective camera that I love, but I have 5 cameras that are doing the job for me.
#1 is a Foscam FI8910 which is a Jpeg camera.
#2, #3 & #4 are Foscam FI9821P, an H264 cameras.
#5 is is a VStarcam C7824WIP.
My initial need was to keep tabs on my wife who was totally disabled, they all worked great for that.
After her passing I now use them for home security.
All of them support a microSD card.
All of them are accessible from the Mac, but most of the available software for that sucks.
So for years I have used an App on both my iPhone & iPad called LiveCams Pro. Of all the apps i have tried, this one talks to all my cameras and allows me to control recording, view, pan & tilt. So I have an old iPad mounted on an arm near my desk, and I can view up to six cameras on one screen. (see attached screenshot).
I do not have them setup for remote viewing when I am away from the house, although that is possible. I just access them through the LAN either by WiFi or Ethernet.
I, too, am happy with the Wyze cams. I have three, one of which is the pan camera. It is mounted on my back porch and pans to two views that allow me to keep track of my schnauzer while he is out doing his business. While the cameras are not weather proof, the pan cam has performed all winter here in Minnesota, at one point close to 30 below zero. Wyze has announced they are working on an exterior version of their camera line.
Yeah, WyzeCam is where it’s at. I especially like My WyzeCam Pan.
I also have a Foscam that I have used for years and I recently added a Wyze. I like them both, they work very well but my favorite cameras are my Blink wireless cameras. They’re completely wireless so I am able to locate them around the perimeter of our house without stringing wires. The company developed a remarkable chip that allows the cameras to get best of class battery life. I easily get 1 to 2 years of battery life before I have to change in a new battery. They use standard AA lithium batteries. And, also important to you, the cloud storage cost nothing. They even have an optional month-to-month monitoring plan so if you’re out of the country you can pay a company by the month to monitor the cameras — all without a contract.
I can highly recommend cameras from Reolink called Argus 2. They attached to the wireless LAN at home and can be accessed via iPhone, iPad or iMac. They use rechargeable batteries and the nice thing is that you can buy a little solar panel, so that you do not need to manually re-charge them at all.
I use them indoors and outdoors and the one attached to the solar panel has not had a need to be recharged for a year now. It has a constant touch rate of over 80% always, even in winter time.
They are motion activated, have infrared capability and store data on SD cards. You can access the data from your wireless lan or if you’re away via the Internet. You get an alert on your iPhone if a motion is detected (configurable).
They have excellent picture quality.
In the early days of this forum (I think – it might have been the MPU forum) I posted that I had two Wyze cameras and that one of them would disconnect and need reconnecting in person, which made it useless for remote use.
Apparently one of the many firmware updates since then has fixed this issue. Neither camera has disconnected once since at least August. And when there is a power failure, they reconnect on their own once the network is up, with no human intervention needed.
Just wanted to correct the record/provide an update from last June/ July. I am now very happy with my Wyze cameras and am considering buying a few more.
Same here, David. Early on with my two standard Wyze Cams I ran into problems while trying to do firmware updates. I believe the problem lay with the micro disks I had in the cameras. Wyze asked me to send in disk, which I did, and they replaced with the one they sold. It’s been trouble free ever since and I do no maintenance whatsoever. I found Wyze tech support very helpful.
Yes – they seem to be very actively updating and improving their cameras. Firmware updates come regularly. And my original order was delayed because they received a shipment of cameras that were not up to their specs and could not fulfill the order until they got good cameras. They were very upfront with this and sent test images of the defective cameras showing why they rejected them, and two or three followup emails letting their customers know where they were in the process of completing the orders. The flaw was hard for me to see, but the folks at Wyze saw it and didn’t want to use them. They added extra cables to all backordered cameras as a way of saying “thanks for your patience” for those of us who did not cancel their orders (which they offered up-front as one option).
Overall, they seem like a great outfit.
Now tell us about their security! IoT devices are notorious for their myriad problems here. Common issues include firmware updating authentication, encryption of images over network/to cloud/to portable devices, default/fixed admin passwords, hackability into home network, ad nauseam. Home DVRs w/security cam packages add another layer of similar issues. These have been widely reported. Basically: cheap & plug 'n play = insecure
I don’t know if this will satisfy you, but here is what their FAQ about privacy and security sez:
We take our customers’ data safety very seriously. The communication requests between your mobile device, your Wyze product, and the AWS Cloud Server are made via https (Transport Layer Security (TLS)) for alert videos. We use symmetric and asymmetric encryption, consistent hashing, and other ways to make sure users’ information cannot be stolen. Each camera has its own secret key and certificate so that we can validate its identity during handshake. The contents are encrypted via AES 128-bit encryption to protect the security of the live stream and playback data. During the connection process, every device in the process has its own secret key and certification, so that we can validate their identity during handshake. Even if a hacker intercepts the data package, the data cannot be decrypted.
Personally, I’m more worried that someone with a hammer will smash the glass in the door and walk off with all my technology during my absence.
