New gadget!!

[Fon]

Iv bought one of these. 

 

[video=youtube]

 

Its basically a doorbell that pings your smartphone, lets you see who's there, talk to them, and it will record the person there, even if they don't press the doorbell, 

 

It has very mixed reviews on amazon. 

 

I think the bad reviews are from people who dont have a good internet connection. As iv found the device faultless so far, (it is still my first day)

 

Yesterday when I was setting it up, live support did say they had sever issues, and I did experience problems, but so far, at home with my phone on wifi its fine. 

 

Ill report later when im on 3g etc, and let you know if its worth it. 

 

You can get this for £150 new, or lowest iv seen it on amazon is £125 for a returned opened item. 

 

Its currently shot up in price, so I wouldn't buy it at the moment. I also wouldn't buy from ebay, as if your wifi signal at home is crap outside your front door, your have trouble returning it. 

 

Fon

[Minty]

Wow!!! Nice one [emoji6]

Looks and sounds good, did see this at the gadget show.

Have fun with it!

[goldringers]

And what if they just knock ? I always knock because 9 times out of 10 bells don't work

[daz2905]

We were so close to buying this and the security camera at the gadget show. They were £175 each. Decided to hang back and buy later because i wanted to know more about installation, battery life and would rather buy direct than from a stand at the gadget show and the reviews on Amazon were pretty mixed.

Please post a more detailed review when you get time Fon. I'd be interested to know everything about this. For the money they seemed really good value to me, my main concern was wiring it to a permanent power source because i'm thinking battery life may not be too great and i didn't fancy having to keep charging the battery. I was pretty impressed by it though, if it works as described i'll get one.

I look forward to your review.

@ goldringers. Works as a security camera and can record to the manufacturers server for a couple of quid a month with the added bonus that you can talk through it too and give instruction to delivery drivers, postman and so on.

[ktv303]

got one of these a while ago http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Focus-Wi-Fi-Monitoring-Camera/dp/B00LFNBOB0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

it records to a cloud and sends vid and pics to my phone when the movement, heat or sound sensor is activated.

its got some shit reviews but has always worked fine for me with no issues.

 

i originally got it to put above my door (on the inside) to see who was knocking but discovered its smoked glass above it so it couldnt see shit lol oops.

 

its in my hall now doing nothing except me annoying the cat now n then

 

(that reminds me to google how i can see through smoked glass)

[l0gic]

Looks good.

I'd be interested in how you get on with it Fon.

 

K.

[tuff_enuff_toft]

This is worth it just to catch Yodel chucking ur parcel over the fence.

[noiseboy]

Can you also connect it to ispy?

[Fon]

1st day running.

 

night one (home from work) had problems setting it up as there servers need to be running and they were doing some upgrade. Live chat was a good experience.

 

Day two, the thing is now setup, but only charged, not mounted or connected to power, but connected to the home wifi. Left it on the window ledge just to see if it recorded anything. It didnt! Came home and still had 100% battery. If I ring the bell on batteries it rings my phone within a few seconds (phone is on the same home wifi network) If I disconnect my phone from my home wifi and use 3g, I get a ring on my phone with about 5 seconds lag.

 

Day two evening, connect it to the outside of my house, using existing wiring for doorbell. It works flawlessly, rings phone, displays video quickly (samsungs S4 Stock) and rings existing internal doorbell (its a real doorbell, not a chime, apparently with a chime you have to use a supplied diode, untested)

 

Day two night time, no recorded events.

 

Day three leaving for work, motion detection notices me walking out the door and records me without me having to ring the bell. I practice approaching the front door from the edge of my property (about 6 meters, ) It records from the moment im on my drive,

 

Day three at work, I get about 4 false alarms from small lorries driving down my road. The road is just a pavement away from my drive. There was probably in excess of 40 cars (guess) that day though. So seems only big things trigger it off that far away. Day three on way home from work, I get about 20 false alarms, It would appear the sun going down and casting a shadow is effecting it, even though it use's a PIR and not motion detection.

 

Day three at home, I have 30 mins to play with this thing before I have to deal with the kids. I couldn't find a motion setting where it wouldn't give false alarms, or, would start recording within a reasonable time. (IE if i make it less sensitive and approach my property, it only starts recording once im already at the front door. ) To be fair, There are two sensitivity settings and Iv only played with one. So I need more time to adjust both of them, and see if I can get no false alarms, AND recording within a reasonable time.

 

So far im impressed.

 

My only 2 concerns are,

 

1)If the company goes bust, there is no API, to allow me to record from it myself. (they charge $30 a year)

2) a lot of others report lag, Im on a 24 mg connection with a wifi extender near the door. Im hoping thats fixing the problem. But Im also on a free 30 day trial of their $30 a month recording facility. Some others have reported that once the free trial is up, it slowed down, and it maybe that im on a faster connection as im on the free trial, and once I pay I experience the lag some others report.

 

Ill update tomorrow when I play with the sensitivity some more.

 

Fon

[Fon]

Ok, so a couple of days in now.

 

Im still getting false alarms, so changed the motion detection settings, I made it as lease sensitive as possible,

 

What I found was that it would only record once someone was already at the front door, so I played again trying to find a happy medium.

 

So far I haven't been able to do that. And then I think iv worked out what the problem is. It would appear that the device does not record locally, cache, and then send to the server. It would appear, that the device opens a connection to the server and then records.

 

If this is true, then your going to have a hard time fine tuning it, as, when you make it less sensitive and it only starts recording when someone is at the front door, you dont know if this is your settings, or the fact that the device couldn't get a server slot quickly enough at that moment, so only recorded late in the motion detection.

 

Im going to play some more this weekend, but im fairly sure I wont be able to get a perfect setup. In saying that, im happy for a few false alarms a day, for the convenience of owning it.

 

Bottom line would I buy it again?

 

Yes! At the £159 price it has dropped to again, but I wouldn't pay anymore! Apparently there is a new model coming out soon, and when it does, I expect the price may drop again.

 

Today I also noticed a problem where I couldn't view recordings for a few hours. I imagine although their server had recorded them, they had a problem processing them. It was only when the yanks woke up it was fixed.

 

Fon

[daz2905]

Thanks Fon, i think i'll hold back from buying it until i see how it works out with you. TBH the false alarms would do my head in but if it works as the guy was telling me at the gadget show then i really want one. They were saying that it can take a bit of setting up if you live on a busy road but we live on the bottom corner of a very quiet cul de sac so he said it would be ok and quite easy to set up. 

Now you mention a new model, i'm tempted to wait and see what improvements are done on that unless of course you find out the source of your problems and can get it set up right.

[Fon]

The source of my problems is the a moderately busy road.

 

If your at the end of a cul de sac, id defo buy one mate.

 

Fon

[Fon]

OK, testing over with,

 

the results,

 

If you want this as a doorbell that pings your phone, and lets you talk to people etc, its great.

 

If your buying this as a motion detecting, camera, your probably going to be disappointed unless you have a very long drive / path to your front door.

 

The main problem is the device does not appear to have any storage to save the video, so all videos are saved online. The process for the camera to ping your phone is quick, but the process for the camera to detect motion, connect to the server, and start saving is slow. So its possible for the postman to quickly arrive at your door, put the letters in, and walk off, before the device starts saving video (although your get notified quite quickly, )

 

Id estimate that the video starts recording anywhere up to 10 seconds after it detects motion.

 

Fon

[Fon]

Dont buy this heap of shit, its not worth the money.

 

Although the live support is good, they never actual get to the bottom of problems.

 

It may improve with firmware updates in the future, but its simply not a working solution at the moment.

 

Fon

[daz2905]

I didn't bother buying after you said about the delay in server recording. The door bell is great but we want the security camera too. If anyone breaks in it will be by the back of the house and if it doesn't record tham walking past the front it seems pretty useless. I'll just keep having parcels delivered to work until i find something that does the job or just manually install cameras.