Ctronics WiFi Wireless Security Camera Outdoor Bullet Home Surveillance IP Camera HD 1080P Night Vision,Motion Detect,Email Alert,PC,Phone,Tablet,CMS Remote Review,Night Vision,Up to 128G SD

Just to be clear right from the start, I have been an electronics tech for the past quarter century. I also run and maintain a house intranet with multiple computers, users and devices and have done so for many years. I am comfortable with tech.Pros and cons at the bottom.What this company has done is to put together a thing that sort of works. You can plug it in and get an image over your WiFi to your phone in a matter of minutes. It's easy to mount with the included hardware, template and basic tools. The manual is a little sparse on explaining what everything on the app does, but it's not that hard to figure out (most of it). The translation from to English was done very well but was severely lacking in content.So now you've spent 15 minutes installing it and getting it working to your phone. You've set it so that it sends an alert to your phone whenever the motion detection is triggered. That's all well and good if you're sitting in your living room, but what if you want to set this up to alert you when you're not home? There's an option to have it email you whenever the motion detector goes off, but it's set up like a 90's router configuration page. I just want to give it my email address and have it send me a pic. How hard is that to program? Well it turns out, pretty darn difficult with this thing. Do you know what an SMTP server is or how to set one up? How much do you know about SSL? I get the feeling that this company focused too much on designing the hardware and not enough on the software.Ok so how about storing images and video to the cloud? Nope. I mean, not easily. This was the way I got it to work (and to be honest, I spent most of today having a little fun getting there). Firstly, unless you happen to have an FTP server or want to buy into an expensive monthly service, your only other option is to build your own NAS so that you can use its FTP function to pull the content. Then it's simply a matter of configuring your NAS to upload the content to Google Drive, or what have you. I used a Raspberry Pi with Open Media Vault and the Duplicati plugin as my NAS.And it worked! Sort of. The videos it creates are a weird .264 file format which you have to convert somehow (found out that Ctronics does offer a free converter, but it's SUPER bare bones. No drag-and-drop, for instance. And I couldn't find a mention of this in the manual, had to find it on my own). Ok. So now you have your imagery being sent to the cloud... except when it isn't, because now randomly it doesn't work and won't trigger for some reason. After playing with the sensitivity for about an hour, it was either firing an alert at the slightest twitch of a blade of grass in my front yard, or not at all even when my wife was jumping up and down in front of it.I was willing to overlook the shenanigans involved with being able to remotely review security imagery and footage, as well as the poor documentation, but since the motion sensing only seems to work now and then, that's a hard no. This thing's going back in the box and back to Amazon.Pros:-Robust physical design.-Easy physical installation.-Up and running in a matter of minutes.-No problems getting the camera to work with the app right out of the box.Cons:-App options are poorly explained.-Setup is poorly explained.-No easy remote (cloud) storage options.-PC configuration is particularly onerous.-Intermittent motion detection with inscrutible settings.Pictures are:-two of the config screens on PC. Some of these options are mentioned nowhere. Never did find out what a "linkage" is or what it does.-App setup screen for video. No idea why there are two streams, why their settings are different (these are default) or what they do. Maybe one is for night vision? No documentation and no clue.-Live video capture on my phone. Locked in landscape mode FYI. Only some of the icon settings are explained in the documentation.

The wifi camera market is exploding right now with sleek doorbell cameras and other nifty products, many of which are rather pricey. This unit looks like a fairly clunky device, old-school in appearance, and it must be wired to a power source (it doesn't run on batteries). But if you don't mind hiding the cord to the camera, then this is a great permanent installation option. The image it captures is actually quite good, and you can set it up (via the app) to only capture when it senses movement, or it can record constantly in clip lengths of your choosing (it can save a file every 30 seconds or every hour or whatever). The built-in infrared illuminator provides a good black and white image at night. You can set the motion sensitivity, of course, but also exclude parts of the picture frame from acting as a trigger (we exclude our street so passing cars don't trigger it). You can see a live feed on your phone or tablet from anywhere that you have internet access, and the camera has a micro SD card slot for holding stills or videos until full (my 64gb card can capture many days of action when on motion-trigger) and you can download those files to your computer or other device anytime you want for saving. The trigger system can simply record, or record and notify you through your smartphone, etc.The only real negative is the installation itself, because you have to fiddle a bit. Getting the SD card into the camera requires that you disassemble the camera body. Getting it positioned involves some trial and error including loosening and tightening a couple of set screws, which if you are on a step ladder can be time consuming. But we are thinking of buying additional cameras for our house and I would recommend the unit to anyone who isn't afraid of taking the time to get it installed and set up.

We purchased this camera for our front porch. It is under an awning, so we're not sure exactly how weatherproof it is, but it's holding up very well. As for the motion sensor you have to find that sweet spot, with the settings, otherwise you're just going to get constant notifications, or on the other side you won't get any notifications.If you download their app you can easily see the camera at any time oh, and if you put in the IP address of the camera, you can actually view it real time off of your computer.the one main issue I have with this camera, see the pictures, is the three pigtails that come off of the camera. It makes it a difficult time where you want to place it, because you have to be mindful of the three pigtails.Overall we are pretty happy with the purchase of this camera.

This was easy enough to set up if you have at least a little experience with setting up WiFi devices. The mounting was easy enough, had to stretch a bit to position this somewhere that worked for us. I like it better than my doorbell device for random check ins, but what I like best is the look of it. It looks like what it is, so it should deter porch/package thieves.Picture is very good for WiFi and motion detect seems to be in point. Pretty good at night as well. I’ve only just installed so will update with any issues. For now, I’m very very pleased! I’ve tried a few and this looks to be a keeper.

Haven't being able to try the motion detection; but everything else works great

This is the second one of this brand and it is an amazing camera. Picture quality is great and little to no lag. The first one is wired ethernet, second is wireless and virtually no difference.

I have two of these cameras and I'm very pleased with them.Very easy to setup and the picture quality is very good.No problems with the wireless connection.

Motion detection is intermittent, also no AI so that moving shadows from trees trigger detection. Great wide angle picture though. Most of the problems are in firmware.