New member (9-8-19) My interest is in whole house security. Problem I’m currently facing is people who tell me they can do but never have. I’m not interested in them learning on my house. I think to start we need front door, front yard and garage coverage. I think this needs 2 outdoor cameras, doorbell camera, and indoor camera. Currently I want control with computer and cellphone.,
Please tell me what I need to know.
I have some ability for installation but I’m 84 really don’t want to climb ladders. (I own many acquired over the years.)
You can do it very easily, with Wyze cams. They are almost intuitive. The basic camera requires <5 mins/unit to set up. Just follow the very simple instructions. I did have a person mount one, under the eaves, looking down the driveway to monitor deliveries. With a 25’ cable, a small hole in the wall, and a receptacle inside the garage, it does very well.
It is just the item for Southern Michigan Wx, also. Rain and snow can be seen on the driveway. Hope this helps,
Wyze doesn’t make a doorbell camera at this time. Instead, I personally use a V2 Wyze cam looking out my guest bedroom window at my driveway, which I call the “Front Door” cam. I had to remove the screen from the window to accommodate that one.
Wyze also hasn’t released an outdoor camera yet, but many have been successful with mounting the camera outdoors under overhangs, myself included. I have two V2s under a large overhang on my back patio that have done well since April. They have not seen a winter yet, but from other reports in this forum I don’t expect any problems. The back patio cams are powered from the back patio light fixture using a screw-in power adapter (and a small hole drilled into the bottom of the fixture to let the cables out). Outdoor installations take some thought on how best to power the camera for your specific situation.
The Wyze app only works on mobile devices like phones & tablets (both Android & iOS). They do not have a computer app, nor does it look like they will be creating one anytime soon. One of the workarounds it to load a second set of firmware (you will need a microSD card to do this), that gives the camera the RTSP protocol. Then you just need VLC media player on the computer to view the feeds.
Garages are a special case. The problem with garages is they often contain a lot of metal. In my attached garage there is the furnace and ductwork, the water heater, and the garage door and its rails. Not to mention my car. So hopefully your router is close to your garage if you put anything out there. My router is right next to the wall to my garage, but I still lose contact with the camera out there every few days and have to re-power it to regain contact. I put a smart switch out there so I can do that from inside the house. The problem is the furnace, water heater, and my car are in between my camera in the outside wall window and my router. The router is basically DIRECTLY up against the back side of the furnace.
Lastly, just for the record, these aren’t considered security cameras. But many do use them for that purpose. They are just inexpensive smart cameras. They aren’t as robust and infallible as a security camera would be.
If you go the Wyze route, I would recommend a 32 GB microSD card in each camera you buy. That way you can get continuous recordings that you can look back at should an incident occur. The continuous recording will also give you coverage to see what happened if an alert doesn’t trigger, or something happens inside the “12-second clip every 5 minutes” alert window.
So still interested after all these caveats? Are you very technically inclined, or do you have a relative that is? These are pretty easy cameras if you are used to smart home technology, but may be intimidating otherwise.
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I agree very much with @Newshound on this one but I need to add that you should buy an endurance sd card. I haven’t been able to find a single issue anyone has had with cards while using an endurance spec card.
regular cards on the other hand are not made for this application and seem to have issues many times.
there are quite a few cards listed in this thread that might be helpful to you should you choose to go that route.
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