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Experiences with home wifi cameras, different set ups, and different subscriptions

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  • Jun 25th, 2021 6:57 am
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Jun 5, 2010
3150 posts
7726 upvotes
Ontario

Experiences with home wifi cameras, different set ups, and different subscriptions

Hi all,

I'd like to hear from users using the difference ecosystems for their home wifi cameras. I've made the mistake of buying a couple devices randomly on sales, but haven't pushed myself to go all in with something.

I was going to buy a Nest Indoor camera, because I found one on sale, but stopped myself before looking more into it.

The nest camera look good. Nest Aware at $80/year, and Nest Aware Plus at $160/year seem steep.

I bought a Wyze V2 camera, but never set it up. Now I'm debating about getting a bunch of Wyze V3 devices. The subscription looks like $15/year per camera. Can't tell if this is USD or CAN.

I don't have any Blink products. And in general am not invested in the Amazon ecosystem (Alex/echo), so I don't think I would get any of these products. But I'd like to hear from people who have it.

And if you're using something else, I'd love to hear your experiences. Personally, I'm not looking for a huge suite of features. I'd like to replace my kid's baby cameras with some indoor cameras. Something check on them when they are sleeping. I often stream my son's camera all evening on my phone, because he gets sometimes with nightmares, and I like to go see him before he wakes up the rest of the family. And using the same cameras as a front door and backyard security camera may or may not work. But that's what I'm trying to figure out.
1 reply
Sr. Member
Oct 2, 2017
850 posts
608 upvotes
There are generally two ways to go about this.

1. You want to be able to see cameras from outside your home and view them through your phone, then you go with the premade locked-in/subscription cloud whatever setup. In this case it is best to stick to one manufacturer since it would be a pain to mix them up. This mean you're locked in and subscribed.

2. You don't care about cloud storage or looking at it through your phone. In this case you can get wifi cameras that support the ONVIF protocol, then run some desktop or other software (called an NVR) that connects to the camera and records video to that computers hard drive. Most of the time with this setup you can use your phone to connect directly to the camera to look at it, or the NVR will have a web interface in your home network to view the recordings. You will not get alerts and you cannot view your cameras outside of your home network (e.g while you are away)

3. You're very tech savvy or want to learn and DIY it, in this case you go with #2 but add the ability to get alerts on your phone and access cameras while you are outside of your home (using openVPN or something like that).


That said to me generally the cheapest solution is to get a wyze cam. They are very inexpensive, you can view them on your phone and outside your home but the camera quality isn't that great.
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