Has anyone here heard of or used these WiFi security cameras?

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Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon

In Remembrance Jan 2024
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HCL Supporter
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Nov 28, 2017
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The Wolverine State
Weedygarden said:
Thank you! I'm going to order several! That is such a good deal!
Click to expand...

If they work as advertised, I think it's an awesome deal, lol......................we'll see. Do you have an Android or IPhone? I see it says Android as the controller.
 
havasu said:
Any camera is better than not having any, but in my area, the crooks are using wi-fi jammers outside your house before breaking in. Law enforcement is now recommending both wi-fi and hard wired cameras.
Click to expand...
I have a 4 cam wireless Lorex, but they are wired for power so it sorta limits where I can mount them outside.

These techabillies around here aren't likely to be that advanced, lol.
 
Curmudgeon said:
These techabillies around here aren't likely to be that advanced, lol.
Click to expand...
Honestly, I was shocked to see this technology happening around these parts as well, but these thieves are pulling out all stops to get something for free. If they just used their knowledge to do something honest, they would be great employees!

Teach a man to fish, and they will eat forever. Give a man a fish, and he will vote for you forever!
 
I have similar cameras as part of my SimpliSafe security system.





They have morion detection and automatically record so I can review what critters are in the garden. They are integrated into the alarms so if a door or window is opened they start recording. They also have sirens built in that fire off when alarm is triggered. A lot of other features. They use rechargeable batteries.

I can view the cameras even when I am not at home.

Ben
 
I have Wyze cameras. Cheap, available at Home Depot easy to set up, and they have a good picture. Less than $20.
I have 4 of them. One is a totally wireless ($80) meaning it runs on a battery and you can attach a small solar panel or recharge it every few months.
You have the option of monitoring service for $20 a year or not. I have 1 monitored and the rest no monitoring.
 
We have a SimpliSafe system. My wife researched the hell out of all of them, and she thought SimpliSafe was the best value. I trust her judgement.
 
The potential problems I see with those Garsentx cameras:

They are powered by a built-in lithium battery. It says 300mAh. That is not much. A single AAA alkaline battery has about four times that capacity. This microscopic battery is not going to support recording video, powering an IR LED for nighttime use, and sending data over WiFi for much more than a few minutes. It also says that the video it creates is "AVI format" which is very large in size (and bandwidth to transmit) compared to modern standards. How do you recharge this built-in battery? It says it comes with a USB cable. Do you have to climb up to the cameras position and take it down for recharges? You may be doing this very frequently (possibly several times a day if you have any amount of motion around the camera).

You use the manufacturers custom app to access the camera. The majority of the time that means you have to go through there servers. Which may be in China. Encrypted connection? Secure data storage of your videos? It doesn't say. And this unknown company may not remain in business for long.

The seller is in China. It is "sold and shipped" by them, not Amazon. If you have problems, looks like you contact them (and probably return the camera) to:

Business Name: Lai xin tuo ke ji (cheng du) you xian gong si
Business Address:
沙湾东一路1号1栋2单元6楼
4号附2号
成都市
金牛区
四川省
610000
CN

Good luck hand writing that address on the shipping box correctly. It would take me longer to write that than it would take to transport it there.

I would treat this camera as a throw-away myself. Don't make long term plans based on it.
 
We have "Ring" at one house, "Blink" at the other. Problem with both is they need a wireless internet connection. I haven't worked with blink enough yet to compare the two.
Screenshot 2023-10-15 at 3.04.41 PM.png
 
I can only comment on three brands that I have used: Ring, TP-Link, and Wyze

Ring
---
You are locked into their walled garden totally. You cannot access your cameras outside of their app. Free access to your camera only allows you to see the current live view, you do not get recordings and you cannot review anything that happened in the past. To enable recording and viewing past events (that occurred during the last two weeks only), you enable your credit card to them at a rate of $100 per year (more if you go month to month rather than yearly). You can download recordings locally and then keep them forever if you so desire. The video quality they provide is OK. Except for the doorbell cam. That uses such a wide angle lens (almost a fisheye) that you get a very good shot of an enlarged nose if the viewee is looking right at the camera. But people ten feet away are very reduced in size. Also, with the doorbell cam (at least the one we have) you cannot adjust where it is pointing to. Generally you will replace your existing doorbell with it. That way you have access to the old doorbells normal 12v to power the camera without batteries. So whatever your doorbell currently points to is what the camera will point to. Which is usually the street. So traffic out there will trigger motion alerts. You can configure around this to some extent though. Also, our front porch is shaded and the camera points out to a sunlit street. The camera cannot handle the exposure difference. During maximum sun, the street scene is bleached white and the porch scene is very dark. Lord help you if there's snow out there in sunlight. The camera is totally useless then. This would not be so much of a problem if the doorbell location was not shaded like ours is. The camera should be able to adjust for the intense light as long as it's even across it's field of view.

There is a delay associated with Ring cameras. For one, motion detection usually takes several seconds to notify your phone. Anywhere between 2 seconds and 10 seconds. 2 seconds is the extremely rare case. Plan on 6 to 8 seconds more routinely. Then, after you are notified of motion, your start the app on your phone. Just bringing the app up is at least 5 seconds on a fairly fast Android phone. That it takes another 5 to 10 seconds to push a couple of buttons and finally acquire the live video from the camera. By this time your visitor is gone, or maybe you'll catch a glimpse of their butt as they're leaving if they were the patient type. Now, if you thought that things might be faster if you were using your computer rather than your phone to access the camera, be advised that the computer interface will only allow you to look at previously recorded videos. You cannot get a live feed from a computer.

Ring cameras do not have very good radios built into them IMHO. They are OK if your WiFi router is inside the house, the camera is also inside the house, and they are not too distant from each other. However, most people mount their security cameras outside the house, and a problem can occur there. You can barely get a connection to a RIng camera through an outside wall. Even if the WiFi router is almost against the wall on the inside, and the Ring camera is immediately outside the wall (like a doorbell cam that is mounted on the outside wall). Ring will sell you a special radio plug for communication. This plug receives WiFi on one side (electrically speaking) and uses a higher RF frequency one the other (electrical) side. This does a little better getting to an outside Ring camera, but not much. My setup is a WiFi router about 10 feet from the Ring RF dingle-fobby. Direct line of sight, no obstructions. About the strongest WiFi signal you can get. The Ring dingle-fobby is about 4 feet away from the doorbell camera, with a solid wooden door between them. Even this ridiculously close range communication is iffy. But once you get it connected initially (despite "low signal" warnings) it tends to stay connected for the most part, so that's good.

Because of all these things, I consider Ring as good for "after the fact" viewing of videos and pretty useless for live feeds. YMMV based on how radio signals work around your house. I'm thinking some of the delay in getting access to a video feed may be due to these "low signals" per RIng, but since the stupid devices are almost touching (just with a little wood between them), I don't know how you'd improve things. Note that where our doorbell cam is, there is none of that metal covered insulation some houses use in the way (that could certainly kill your radio signal). It is pure wood that frames the wood door and holds the doorbell.

(continued in a subsequent post because my typing got too long! ...)
 
(continued from a previous post...)

TP-Link
---
I only have one of these cameras, and I bought it for mostly playing around. I don't actively use it for anything. Inside the house, it does good. I have never tried it outside so I cannot say how well it communicates over WiFi when faced with an exterior wall. The video resolution is better than the Ring cameras. At least on the model that I have. There are different models with different resolutions. The higher video resolution is slight, and probably won't make much of a difference in typical use. You do not have to use their app to access a video feed from the camera (except for initial setup). Although their app is the most convenient way for sure. You can set up what is called an "RTSP feed" and access video from the camera directly, taking TP-Link out as the middleman. In doing this, you would be responsible for your own recording and such. This can be done, but falls into the realm of "computer geek territory". Not for the masses. You have to deal with the same video delay issues as Ring when working with TP-Link. Even accessing an RTSP feed (which is direct from the camera to your viewing device) takes several seconds to establish in my testing. 5 to 10 seconds. I do not know what TP-Link charges you for access things like recordings if you use their app.

Wyze
---
I have three of these cameras. Mine are Gen 2 and I think they now make a Gen 3 camera. Like Ring and TP-Link, you use the Wyze app to access the camera (but read on - you can change that). So yada, yada, yada - you have to deal with the same video delay issues as the other guys. You used to be able to get an RTSP feed from the Wyze cameras, but you had to install their beta special firmware to get it. And they have since gotten rid of that beta software and it is no longer available unless you can search out an old copy (which doesn't work with their newer cameras anyway, so you'd have to have an older camera on hand as well). Video quality is the same as Ring and TP-Link. You're not going to be knocked off your feet with high resolution wow!, but it is perfectly usable.

This next part only applies to computer geeks. Normal people should probably just stop reading here.

With the Wyze cameras, you can install "DaFang firmware". That sounds dangerous, but heck, they're only $20 cameras. These cameras accept a microSD card. Basically you copy a few files to the microSD card, stick it into the camera, and use the cameras normal "firmware update" function (holding a button down when you boot it basically). This does not actually modify the cameras firmware. It modifies the bootloader. So what the bootloader does when booting is first check to see if you have a microSD card inserted with a bootable OS on it. If found, it will boot off of that. If not found, it will proceed to boot the standard camera internal firmware. This is cool - to revert from custom firmware to factory firmware, just pull out the microSD card (or insert one that that does not have an OS on it). So after you have modified the bootloader on the camera, you take that microSD card and copy a few more files to it which are the OS (linux) and the new camera firmware. Then boot the camera again. Yippee! If you have the microSD card inserted, you are running DaFang, if not, you are running standard Wyze.

Now, the DaFang firmware is worlds different than the Wyze firmware. Much more control of the camera. And you are not dependent on any third party or on the internet. You do need a network connection to the camera, but your WiFi router provides that. You can totally unplug the WAN cable to connects you to the outside internet if you want. You access the camera from any web browser - just point to the cameras local IP address. Login/password required, which you can change. You can set up an RTSP feed like on the TP-Link. Then you can use something like VLC to access the video feed. You can configure the camera to use MQTT to push notifications of motion. You can configure other protocols as well but I haven't used anything other than MQTT myself. DaFang gives you more control over things like turning the IR LED on and off, turning the IR filter on and off (separately from the LED), configuring how the camera will detect when to automatically turn on the IR LED.

The RTSP feed is faster to acquire than with the TP-Link by a few seconds. But it still takes maybe 5 seconds. The DaFang firmware also gives you access to "current picture". Which is not a video, but a single snapshot. The cool thing here, is that this is instantaneous. You point your web browser to the cameras URL for "current picture" and bam, it's there immediately. This is a great feature. I have mine set up to detect motion in a specific subset area of the video field of view, and when detected, send an MQTT message advising that. Then on my computer, I have a background process waiting for MQTT notifications. When the computer receives such a notification, it logs the event, plays a sound, pops up a notification on the computer screen, and then opens (or creates a new tab) in my web browser and displays the current picture. We are talking about 1 second between motion detection until an image is on my computer screen (and that's when it has to start up the web browser from scratch). Really fast. If I want a semi-video effect, I can just click on my browsers "refresh" button over and over and it keeps loading a new "current picture" as fast as I click. I do use a locally hosted MQTT broker for message management. You can use a web based one from many companies for free, but then you are dependent on the internet being up and running, and also on that third party company providing the broker. There are possible delays in that path too. So I just run my own broker locally on a server here at home. That only took a few minutes to set up and test.

One thing - I do not know if the newest Wyze Gen 3 cameras work with the DaFang firmware. I have never tried that (all my Wyze cameras are Gen 2). But note that DaFang are the original developers of the Wyze cameras, the Wyze company got the cameras (licensed them or whatever) and then installed their custom Wyze firmware on them.

I have my DaFang/Wyze camera set up on it's own little subnet. All by itself. That subnet is almost totally isolated. It has no access to the internet incoming or outgoing. It cannot initiate a network connection to anywhere except one specific port on one specific home server to send an MQTT message. Other subnets on my home network can only initiate access that DaFang/Wyze on port 80 (for current pic and control) and the RTSP feed port (I forget that port number at the moment). So it's locked down good and tight. If I want to access the camera from some remote location (not in my home), I have to first establish a VPN connection into my home network, and then I can navigate through the firewall hole from my LAN to get to the DaFang/Wyze isolated subnet.

I could set up video recording from the DaFang/Wyze using some self-hosted recording software and it's RTSP feed. There are several free applications available. But I haven't done this because I don't really need that capability. That's what I use the Ring cameras for. Those may suck at live feeds, but they're good for recording (as long as you continue to pay Ring). My DaFang/Wyze is what I use to "Show me what's going on immediately! No delays!" A different use entirely.

Wow. That turned into a friggin' long post!
 
Haertig said:
(continued from a previous post...)

TP-Link
---
I only have one of these cameras, and I bought it for mostly playing around. I don't actively use it for anything. Inside the house, it does good. I have never tried it outside so I cannot say how well it communicates over WiFi when faced with an exterior wall. The video resolution is better than the Ring cameras. At least on the model that I have. There are different models with different resolutions. The higher video resolution is slight, and probably won't make much of a difference in typical use. You do not have to use their app to access a video feed from the camera (except for initial setup). Although their app is the most convenient way for sure. You can set up what is called an "RTSP feed" and access video from the camera directly, taking TP-Link out as the middleman. In doing this, you would be responsible for your own recording and such. This can be done, but falls into the realm of "computer geek territory". Not for the masses. You have to deal with the same video delay issues as Ring when working with TP-Link. Even accessing an RTSP feed (which is direct from the camera to your viewing device) takes several seconds to establish in my testing. 5 to 10 seconds. I do not know what TP-Link charges you for access things like recordings if you use their app.

Wyze
---
I have three of these cameras. Mine are Gen 2 and I think they now make a Gen 3 camera. Like Ring and TP-Link, you use the Wyze app to access the camera (but read on - you can change that). So yada, yada, yada - you have to deal with the same video delay issues as the other guys. You used to be able to get an RTSP feed from the Wyze cameras, but you had to install their beta special firmware to get it. And they have since gotten rid of that beta software and it is no longer available unless you can search out an old copy (which doesn't work with their newer cameras anyway, so you'd have to have an older camera on hand as well). Video quality is the same as Ring and TP-Link. You're not going to be knocked off your feet with high resolution wow!, but it is perfectly usable.

This next part only applies to computer geeks. Normal people should probably just stop reading here.

With the Wyze cameras, you can install "DaFang firmware". That sounds dangerous, but heck, they're only $20 cameras. These cameras accept a microSD card. Basically you copy a few files to the microSD card, stick it into the camera, and use the cameras normal "firmware update" function (holding a button down when you boot it basically). This does not actually modify the cameras firmware. It modifies the bootloader. So what the bootloader does when booting is first check to see if you have a microSD card inserted with a bootable OS on it. If found, it will boot off of that. If not found, it will proceed to boot the standard camera internal firmware. This is cool - to revert from custom firmware to factory firmware, just pull out the microSD card (or insert one that that does not have an OS on it). So after you have modified the bootloader on the camera, you take that microSD card and copy a few more files to it which are the OS (linux) and the new camera firmware. Then boot the camera again. Yippee! If you have the microSD card inserted, you are running DaFang, if not, you are running standard Wyze.

Now, the DaFang firmware is worlds different than the Wyze firmware. Much more control of the camera. And you are not dependent on any third party or on the internet. You do need a network connection to the camera, but your WiFi router provides that. You can totally unplug the WAN cable to connects you to the outside internet if you want. You access the camera from any web browser - just point to the cameras local IP address. Login/password required, which you can change. You can set up an RTSP feed like on the TP-Link. Then you can use something like VLC to access the video feed. You can configure the camera to use MQTT to push notifications of motion. You can configure other protocols as well but I haven't used anything other than MQTT myself. DaFang gives you more control over things like turning the IR LED on and off, turning the IR filter on and off (separately from the LED), configuring how the camera will detect when to automatically turn on the IR LED.

The RTSP feed is faster to acquire than with the TP-Link by a few seconds. But it still takes maybe 5 seconds. The DaFang firmware also gives you access to "current picture". Which is not a video, but a single snapshot. The cool thing here, is that this is instantaneous. You point your web browser to the cameras URL for "current picture" and bam, it's there immediately. This is a great feature. I have mine set up to detect motion in a specific subset area of the video field of view, and when detected, send an MQTT message advising that. Then on my computer, I have a background process waiting for MQTT notifications. When the computer receives such a notification, it logs the event, plays a sound, pops up a notification on the computer screen, and then opens (or creates a new tab) in my web browser and displays the current picture. We are talking about 1 second between motion detection until an image is on my computer screen (and that's when it has to start up the web browser from scratch). Really fast. If I want a semi-video effect, I can just click on my browsers "refresh" button over and over and it keeps loading a new "current picture" as fast as I click. I do use a locally hosted MQTT broker for message management. You can use a web based one from many companies for free, but then you are dependent on the internet being up and running, and also on that third party company providing the broker. There are possible delays in that path too. So I just run my own broker locally on a server here at home. That only took a few minutes to set up and test.

One thing - I do not know if the newest Wyze Gen 3 cameras work with the DaFang firmware. I have never tried that (all my Wyze cameras are Gen 2). But note that DaFang are the original developers of the Wyze cameras, the Wyze company got the cameras (licensed them or whatever) and then installed their custom Wyze firmware on them.

I have my DaFang/Wyze camera set up on it's own little subnet. All by itself. That subnet is almost totally isolated. It has no access to the internet incoming or outgoing. It cannot initiate a network connection to anywhere except one specific port on one specific home server to send an MQTT message. Other subnets on my home network can only initiate access that DaFang/Wyze on port 80 (for current pic and control) and the RTSP feed port (I forget that port number at the moment). So it's locked down good and tight. If I want to access the camera from some remote location (not in my home), I have to first establish a VPN connection into my home network, and then I can navigate through the firewall hole from my LAN to get to the DaFang/Wyze isolated subnet.

I could set up video recording from the DaFang/Wyze using some self-hosted recording software and it's RTSP feed. There are several free applications available. But I haven't done this because I don't really need that capability. That's what I use the Ring cameras for. Those may suck at live feeds, but they're good for recording (as long as you continue to pay Ring). My DaFang/Wyze is what I use to "Show me what's going on immediately! No delays!" A different use entirely.

Wow. That turned into a friggin' long post!
Click to expand...
Long, but filled with good info.
 
I forgot to mention - I don't know how the Wyze camera will perform radio-wise across an exterior wall. I only use mine indoors. In an upstairs window, looking outside. This is a problem for many cameras. Because at night the cameras IR LED comes on automatically, which reflects off the glass window, and blinds the camera. This occurs even if you have the camera smashed up and touching the glass - because most houses these days have double paned windows. So while the camera is touching pane #1, there is pane #2 out there maybe an inch in front of pane #1, and pane #2 is doing the reflecting. Some cameras you may be able to get around this by putting electrical tape over the IR LED. But from what I've read, this rarely works. There is enough light leakage internally to the camera to screw the pooch. But maybe it might work on some specific cameras. Reportedly - and I have not verified - it does NOT work on the Wyze ones.

This is where the DaFang softwares ability to turn ON the IR filter, but turn OFF the IR LED that is reflecting becomes handy. Or course, with the IR LED turned off, how are you supposed to be able to see anything outside? In my case, the second story window where I have this Wyze camera is directly above an outside Ring camera that has it's own IR LEDs. So the Wyze camera is leeching off the IR illumination that the Ring camera is providing. You still want the IR filter on for the Wyze camera, but the DaFang software gives you this independent control (most manufacturer camera apps don't separate these two functions - IR LED vs. IR filter). You can also buy stand-alone IR LED illuminators - no cameras, just lights - and use one of those (outside, not bouncing off the window from inside!) These separate illuminators can also be useful for cameras like Ring, etc. that have built-in IR LEDs, because the illuminators are much much brighter. They can turn your marginal IR illumination from the camera into daylight levels of light in the pitch black dark. Where you used to be able to see only your back porch, now you can see your whole backyard, and the neighbors too. But since it's IR, it appears invisible to the human eye, so the neighbors don't know you're watching them. Yikes! I better watch it getting into my hot tub. The neighbors might be IR illuminating ME! 😬
 
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