Home surveillance eye in the sky comes full circle
A raft of new devices is putting a new spin on home surveillance but not all Wi-Fi-connected security cameras are the same.
A raft of new devices is putting a new spin on home surveillance but not all Wi-Fi-connected security cameras are built the same. From recapping your whole day in 30 seconds to serious surveillance there’s plenty on offer at relatively reasonable prices.
Logi Circle
It’s frightening, watching your life at home over a day reduced to 30 seconds of computer-edited, speeded-up video. “Does he really spend his time deep in thought walking in circles with arms crossed?” I say of myself.
This warts-and-all 30-second from midnight video is a key feature of Logi Circle, a cricket-ball sized wireless camera that you hide away in a bookcase, or fasten unobtrusively to a wall. The Circle’s 720p fisheye lens misses nothing. It could be you, a family member, your dog digging under a fence, or neighbours stealing your mail. If it moves, Circle records it.
What sets the camera apart is the ingeniously simple Logi Circle app for iOS and Android. Recorded events appear as little buttons that flow up and down the right-hand side of the vision screen. You press them to replay the action. There’s also a microphone and a speaker. The volume isn’t that strong, but you can hold a basic conversation between your phone and camera. You could also talk to your children, soothe your pets, or frighten away a burglar. The night vision is pretty clear as well.
The Circle’s party trick is the “Day Brief”. Press the button and Logitech’s cloud crunches together a speeded-up 30-second highlights reel of action captured since midnight. While it’s great for recording domestic life it’s not so suited to compiling home security footage. Clips are only stored for 24 hours, although you can manually save any video before it disappears. But if you’re out of cellular range for days walking through a national park, the recordings of a robbery would be erased before you see them. An option to automatically load video to a user’s chosen cloud storage daily might be a good idea for Logitech to consider.
You can configure battery saving mode, rotate vision 180 degrees, switch off the camera and audio, or the LED at the front, suspend and resume pushed notifications of motion, and manually activate night vision — but that’s it. There’s no email notification, and no access to video via a web browser.
Without battery saving mode activated, battery life is only two hours, but there again Circle is not designed to be run permanently on battery. Like most home monitoring cameras with a few exceptions such as Netgear Arlo, you run it 24/7 from the mains. The battery will, for example, let a family member grab the camera and take it into another room to have a conversation through it.
In the end, Circle is easy to set up, has an ingeniously simple app interface, and takes care of video storage and presentation, so you have little to do. The limited repertoire shouldn’t be a problem because while we geeky-types like to tinker with our gadgets day and night, most of the public want set-and-forget. And that’s what Circle delivers. Logitech chief executive Bracken Darrell was right last week when he told The Australian that if a device takes more than 90 seconds to set up, then it’s not ready for prime time.
Clips are accessible from your home Wi-Fi and cellular network when you’re out and about. Retrieval and playback is very fast, although here there’s currently only a few people using Circle. We’ll see how snappy Logitech’s cloud is when thousands are using the camera.
Circle comes with a flat 3-metre USB cable that attaches to power. You can keep it on its magnetic charging stand plugged in permanently or rely on about 2 hours of battery. There’s a mounting bracket, screws and double-sided tape.
Local price and availability is unknown for now but in the US Circle costs $US199 ($277).
Netgear Arlo
No consumer camera is a watertight security device. If a savvy burglar switches off your mains power depriving you of internet connectivity as well as shutting down your cameras, vision will not be recorded. You could however, buy an uninterrupted power supply unit for your router and use a battery powered camera like Arlo. It’s small, wireless, and weatherproof, offering 720p HD resolution with a wide 130-degree field of view.
You will need to install a powered Netgear base station but the rest of the operation is wireless. Press a sync button on the base station, another one on the camera, and you’re linked.
Arlo is great outdoors. The magnetic mounts are sturdy and the base station range is incredible. From my fifth-floor apartment I took Arlo to the ground and out 50 metres to a swimming pool and it was still connected.
There’s no power cord. You use four supplied Lithium 123 camera batteries, which Netgear says lasts 4-6 months. Or you could use cheaper rechargeable ones bought online. One, two and three camera packs can cost $250, $400 and $600 respectively. Prices vary so shop around. Video storage of up to 1GB is free.
Netgear will soon locally release its Arlo Q 1080p camera with a power cord and 2-way audio.
D-Link DCS-5020L Day & Night Pan and Tilt Cloud Camera
The DCS-5020L is one of several configurable consumer cameras that D-Link makes. Vision is just VGA quality, there’s no wide-angle view, but you can set it to rotate to different positions in a room. Burglars will notice its presence however. Cameras can be linked to your router wirelessly and by an Ethernet cable.
You can set the camera to detect motion and/or sound, it can email images, or send images and video via FTP to a NAS or external hosting site. Using your own storage means no media storage fees, irrespective of how much video you accumulate. You can configure video quality and day/night mode settings.
You setup the camera via the mydlink.com website, and use a web configuration tool for advanced settings (which needs to be modernised). There’s also the mydink app. It’s basic but flexible. Recommended price is $219.95 but online look for $150.
Belkin NetCam HD Wi-Fi Camera with Night Vision
Belkin’s NetCam HD is a reliable consumer camera with 720p quality capture, a built-in microphone and 8 infra-red lights for night-time capture, but no wide angle. It can detect motion at different levels of sensitivity and send you emails. You can vary video frame rate and quality.
The NetCam however has a major drawback. You have to pay to store video; there is no free option as with competitors. You’ll pay $6 per month or $60 per year for video storage. Belkin probably factored in storage costs when it set a relatively low $179.95 for the camera, but this ongoing cost per camera is likely to be a turn-off for purchasers.
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