Home Security Cameras ?

[M76]

How good is Blink at night?, this is when I need it the most.
Want to monitor my driveway, side yard and back yard.
Want Wifi, I don't want to run 100ft of wire to the front driveway.
Do you have to store video in the cloud? as I want to store it on a hard rive of some sort.

Again I want a stand alone, do not want to pay for a service.

You can text/email a video to yourself w/ blink, save it as file

[Friesland]

will review

Need the reminder

I think I am going to order this system.
Have you got yours installed yet, if so how do like it?

[bubbapug1]

I have a night owl system from Costco. It’s simple, eight cameras, you can watch anywhere from a cell phone, it has a dvr, it’s easy to set alarms. Great quality images but mines now two years old. The new ones are better.

Stay away from ring. Very glitchy.

[gorn5150]

The Wyze cam V.3 has a starlight sensor that gives you great night video in color. Since Wyze is just a rebranded Xiaomi dafang camera there is third party firmware that makes it an IP camera viewable from any IP camera app. That also prevents it from possibly sending your video to a China server. For $25 it is hard to beat.

[Kay Burton]

I looked at the appropriate options here https://homemakerguide.com/best-wire...curity-camera/ and chose Conico Outdoor Security Camera. Not a cheap option, but investing in safety once is better than changing equipment a hundred times.

[brassburnz]

The Wyze cam V.3 has a starlight sensor that gives you great night video in color. Since Wyze is just a rebranded Xiaomi dafang camera there is third party firmware that makes it an IP camera viewable from any IP camera app. That also prevents it from possibly sending your video to a China server. For $25 it is hard to beat.

I have a couple of Wyze cams around the house. I wouldn't really call them security cameras because they don't record all the time, just in 12 second bursts. They also have a "cool down" period of 4 minutes before they will record again. They will take a micro SD for constant recording, but the interface for looking through the video is clumsy.

If you only need one camera in your house to look out a window, the V3 has an excellent chip for seeing in the dark. It has IR mode, but it's useless behind glass because of the IR reflection. It does have a weather proof housing, but if you mount it outside, it would be easy to steal.

V3's are only available from wyze.com but there is currently a huge delay. They won't be shipping any more units until January. I got lucky and received mine a week ago after ordering it 3 weeks ago. There are quite a few people who pre-ordered in October that still haven't received theirs.

The V2 is great behind window glass during the day, but pretty much useless at night. As I mentioned, the IR is useless because it reflects off the window.

V2 and V3 are the same price. V3 is only available through Wyze-$28.03 after shipping and tax. Amazon and other retailers only have the V2 right now. I've seen V2's on Ebay for $15 and they will get cheaper as soon as V3 availability increases.

Wyze also had a wireless outdoor cam that comes with a dedicated WIFI router. The outdoor starter bundle with the WIFI router is $50 plus tax and shipping from Wyze. The add on outdoor camera is $40.

I have V2, V3 and Outdoor Bundle cams running in various places around my house. I like being able to check on the dog in the back yard, my porch for mail and deliveries, and the front of my house down to the street.

Can't see license plates, but I catch the mailman parking his truck, UPS, FedEx, and Amazon delivery people all day long. I also have one set up in the walkway of my front yard as a "critter cam." I have squirrels, skunks, and a cat that visit on a regular basis. Saw a coyote one time and a mystery animal I still haven't got a positive ID.

The Wyze cams are fairly inexpensive and work well. I've got about $150 tied up in the cams so far.

V2 vs V3 Night Test



V2 vs V3 Daylight Test



Mystery Animal-Wyze Cam V2 with IR Night vision enabled

[TelumLabs]

Check out Costco, I spent $2,500 on my system, my brother spent less than $500 and his is nearly as good.

[Ex Pat]

Wyze.

I've had 3 Wyze cameras for a goodly while - was "off air" with them for a period of time and attempted to set them back to working order

could not access my Wyze account using my password - could not reset - could not get any help from Wyze so I've got the 3 cameras sitting in a box of useless electronic crap

just sayin -

[oldsmoboat]

There's a "workaround" for blink

https://diysmarthomeguide.com/view-b...eras-computer/

I currently use BlueStacks, crashes after a few hours and have to restart.

Tried Nox and MEmu, neither would start without crashing.

Win 10
i7
16 Gb RAM
GTX 1070

[brassburnz]

I've had 3 Wyze cameras for a goodly while - was "off air" with them for a period of time and attempted to set them back to working order

could not access my Wyze account using my password - could not reset - could not get any help from Wyze so I've got the 3 cameras sitting in a box of useless electronic crap

just sayin -

I called this number for Wyze support when I had a dead V2. (206) 339-9646

The tech and I tried to reflash the firmware using a microSD card and my laptop. Didn't work, so they sent me a new one. Didn't even have to return the old one.

[Overdrive]

You can buy a decent DVR for a few hundred bucks.

For a good CCTV system.....Your major costs are gonna be cameras. Cameras for a CCTV system is what a scope is to a rifle. You can have the best rifle in the world you throw a $30 Walmart special on it you’re not reaching out and touching anyone .


For your use you may be ok with some Ring or Nest cameras.

[diveRN]

Just wanted to post an quick head's up regarding a camera system I recently bought on Amazon.. before the Parler fiasco. You might be able to find them elsewhere. I had a 16 channel Q-See that died on me in October after 6 years. I bought it from Costco when we first bought this house. It had been having some issues for a while and wouldn't record, wouldn't allow me to connect remotely anymore. Done, dead. I've used a DDNS service for years and the service kept throwing errors that it couldn't connect to the host.

Since my needs are relatively simple, I didn't want to go out and spend $1500+ on a higher end camera system so I started looking at cheap, Chinese alternatives and found this one for $180. I don't need PTZ or wifi cameras so YMMV depending on what you want/need.

FYI - It does NOT come with a hard drive. Pick your size, I bought a 3TB Western Digital for $70, so I'm into this system for $250 and all I had to do is replace the DVR, cameras, and program it. It used the same coaxial cable and 12v connectors as the q-see so I didn't have to run new cables, but it does come with a 100' cable for each camera.

Resolution is better than the Q-see. You can specify HD or SD for recording depending on what size HDD you get, I just set everything to HD. The interface is a little clunky, but it actually works well. Lots of customization options. Mobile viewing can be done via iPhones, Samsung or whatever you got.

From a mobile standpoint, it will connect without a DDNS service (it uses a MAC address and serial number) which I assume is run through the company's native service (you can sign up for an account). I wasn't wild about a Chinese company being able to look through my system whenever they wanted, so I went back to the DDNS and disabled my account.

Anyway, for the money, it's decent. Longevity will remain to be seen.

[xfer42]

I use a bunch of Reolinks with an NVR (Blue Iris).

Two of the reolinks are wireless PTZ cameras.
The rest are wired PoE IP 5MP cameras.

The cameras can operate standalone, where you can put a SD card in and have them record. The downside to that is you have to manage each one separately and the video is not aggregated into a single interface. Each camera does have a web server, and live viewing though.

If you go with an IP camera, they will be stand alone and can be used with just about any NVR (not DVR) or without. All of the encoding is done on the camera, recording on the camera is optional, and each one has its own management interface. They run for ~$50 for a 5MP each for the PoE cameras. The wireless PTZ cameras are like 3MP and maybe twice as much.

[4P0X1]

Get something that runs on PoE instead of wireless. It's not hard to run a deauthentication attack, so put in the effort and run wired cameras.

[67Cuda]

Here's a video of the Reolink cameras that came with my system.