Remote viewable CCTV camera?

Diddums · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:17

A colleague wants a camera in his house which he can view remotely on a phone / website / whatever. I have zero idea how these things work, anyone got any ideas? He wants the followign features:

View remotely.
Send a text / email / call if movement detected.
Recording with maybe an SD card or something.
Expandable in future perhaps?

Bit vague, I apologize but hopefully you wizards of wisdom will be able to share a few ideas which may be of help.

GO!

Reginald · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:20

My parents got a Yale Smart Home alarm. It takes a few snaps of the intruder before setting off an alarm and is controlled via a smartphone app so you can check in / set the alarm / take pictures etc. It's not the most high tech thing ever but it's wireless (so easy to install), does the trick and is v. reasonable.

Wizardskills · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:36

If he is a bit of a techie and likes to play around with this sort of thing it may be worth getting a raspberry pi and running it on MotionEyeOS

Mynight · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:40

Does it need to be discreet?

Could just check the Mrs phone

.

Russinating · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:41

Nest Cam. Got one at the office and at home and it's the simplest device to setup and does all of the above and more.

boxman2000 · 1 Mar 2017 at 15:58

I have a Foscam FI8910W ip camera, there are others on here that use similar (and better) equivalents but yes these are very good and I use these for baby monitors and work on any web browser or mobile using a wide range of apps.

timmeh · 1 Mar 2017 at 16:11

I've got a Nest indoor camera and a couple of the outdoor ones. They're a doddle to set up and the app/online viewer is great. The subscription is pretty pricey though, it all depends how much they want to spend.

Devrij · 1 Mar 2017 at 16:16

Sounds like this colleague of the OPs has his wife's hot sister round visiting.

Glanza · 1 Mar 2017 at 16:34

Hikivision with a sd card fitted, can access via website / app on phone.

RockLobster · 2 Mar 2017 at 08:29

Hikvision.

Amnesia · 2 Mar 2017 at 08:54

timmeh said:
I've got a Nest indoor camera and a couple of the outdoor ones. They're a doddle to set up and the app/online viewer is great. The subscription is pretty pricey though, it all depends how much they want to spend.

subscription to what ?

Em3bbs · 2 Mar 2017 at 08:58

Amnesia said:
subscription to what ?

You pay for cloud storage:

https://nest.com/camera/meet-nest-cam/#whats-nest-aware

10-day video history
$10 a month or $100 a year for your first camera

$5 a month ($50 a year) for each additional camera

30-day video history
$30 a month or $300 a year for your first camera

$15 a month ($150 a year) for each additional camera

Not sure if it costs different in the UK but that's pretty damn expensive!

boxman2000 · 2 Mar 2017 at 09:19

Glanza said:
Hikivision with a sd card fitted, can access via website / app on phone.

That's the one I couldn't think of. Good reviews.

Russinating · 2 Mar 2017 at 09:28

Em3bbs said:
Not sure if it costs different in the UK but that's pretty damn expensive!

Well it's in pounds to start with, so yeah. £8pm and £4pm for each additional for 10 days.

Kemik · 2 Mar 2017 at 11:23

Russinating said:
Well it's in pounds to start with, so yeah. £8pm and £4pm for each additional for 10 days.

But there is no free feature that sends alerts and records like competitors such as Canary. The problem with the Hikivision cameras is that they don't alert on movement without some kind of DVR/mini computer linked up.

Dis86 · 2 Mar 2017 at 11:25

Hyburnate might be a good chap to speak to about this.

Russinating · 2 Mar 2017 at 11:58

Kemik said:
But there is no free feature that sends alerts and records like competitors such as Canary. The problem with the Hikivision cameras is that they don't alert on movement without some kind of DVR/mini computer linked up.

Correct, did I say it did?

Hyburnate · 2 Mar 2017 at 12:07

Expandable in the future?

The best solution in my eyes with no monthly on-going fees would be Hikvision.

You can pick up a network video recorder which has one bay and one SATA interface for just over £100, that will take 4 cameras so provides future use. The cameras will be connected to the NVR directly which will provide all the power too so no ugly power bricks. You can use network file shares too which is nice if he has a home file server.

You can then use Hikvisions Hik-Connect (HiDDNS is being phased out) to remotely view on a great app

Obviously you can then use email and sms alerts too. The cameras are amazing and very feature rich.

ThePainBarrier · 2 Mar 2017 at 12:23

I've got a couple of Blink wireless CCTV cameras. Work well for me. Check them out on Amazon.

timmeh · 2 Mar 2017 at 14:44

Kemik said:
But there is no free feature that sends alerts and records like competitors such as Canary. The problem with the Hikivision cameras is that they don't alert on movement without some kind of DVR/mini computer linked up.

You can run it without a subscription and still get notifications when it detects movement, and view it live through the app. You don't get the 'I think I saw a person' notifications, just that there was movement. It also only stores 'snapshots' for 3hrs so you can only see stills if you look through the history which was my biggest disappointment with it really. For the price, you should be able to view video history and not just stills.

I've been using my indoor camera without a subscription for a while now and it's been fine but now I'd added 2 more cameras, and a few people in my neighborhood have had their cars broken into, I think I'm going to subscribe.