Home Cam

I was looking for a simple straightforward and cheap way to install CCTV in my home, and so far I’ve been very happy with my experience with NetVue and I’d recommend it to other users.I purchased one indoor NetVue camera to be used to monitor my garden, garage and back door, to record both wildlife and any potential intruders. Following my experiences with this, I purchased two more to cover other areas of my home.Setup was easy. For each camera it took less than 10 mins and included scanning QR codes both from the back of the camera onto my phone, then from my phone screen onto the camera, and then inputting my WiFi password. The camera was up and running very quickly. The camera runs on a USB B cable. The cable provided is around 2m long, which is ample if you have a socket nearby, but for more inaccessible places you may need to consider an extension lead. The camera can be removed from the mounting stand according to preference, and the stand can also be wall-mounted with the screws and plugs included.As you’ll see from pictures posted in other reviews, daytime footage is clear with good colour reproduction. There is a wide field of view (around 130°) which will easily cover most of an average-sized room, garden or driveway (if looking through a window), depending on positioning. Night-time footage uses built-in IR illumination, which seems to work well for the most part although as you might expect there are strong reflections if you try to position the camera looking through a window. For areas with good night-time lighting, such as LED streetlights or external floodlights the camera can cope well enough in daylight mode all the time. The cameras also have speakers and microphones incorporated, which allow you to hear what is going on in a room and also communicated with family/pets/visitors/burglars as appropriate.Cameras and settings are maintained via the NetVue app, which allows you to view footage of all cameras linked to your account in real time both through the same WiFi connection as the cameras or remotely from any location with a data connection. You can also review recorded footage, depending on the type of subscription you have. You can change all of the various settings remotely, and the interface is user-friendly, easy to access and largely self-intuitive.Settings you can alter are factors like day/night mode, motion detection on/off, times of operation and sensitivity; areas of the camera’s view that are responsive to motion detection; speaker volume, resolution (Auto, 1080p, or “standard” 720p) amongst others. If motion detection is switched on, you can have a notification sent to your phone each time the camera is triggered, along with footage of what caused it.There are two main options to record footage. The first is to mount an SD card – as the product info suggests, this would be up to 128GB max, which I’d imagine would be enough for most users’ requirements, but this isn’t something I’ve tried yet. The other is via two subscription models – either continuous recording, or recording of a few seconds’ footage (I’ve had up to about 30 seconds in some cases) when the motion detectors have been triggered. Both of these are paid for subscriptions, which can be paid in monthly installments or as a one-off sum. I’ve found that the sensitivity of motion detection is good enough to only need motion detection recordings for the most part (I have lots of footage of my postman and the pigeons that cavort in my garden).

This is my third Netvue Camera, the other two I bought about a year ago and they are still running well.I live deep in the countryside and I use a load of these to view the outside of my villa. It’s nice to know what’s going on when I’m away from home or to see what the noise is outside is when I’m lying in bed. The picture quality is great (day or night) and the sound quality is fine (even using the camera to talk back to whoever is there). Sometimes the picture can buffer a bit on my Amazon devices but the app on my phone is great.There seems to be a lot of similar specification, similar priced cameras about; all using Amazon web services for the video storage and all requiring a monthly or annual subscription to maintain it. However, the reason I purchased Netvue was because of the Amazon Echo integration. If I’m watching the telly and I hear something odd outside it’s great to be able to say to my Fire TV Stick “Alexa, show Barbeque Area” and see the barbeque area on the big telly. Or, if I’m in bed I can say “Alexa, show front door” and I get to see the front door area on my bedside Echo Spot. What started off as a bit of a novelty has become something really useful.There are pro and cons as with everything. When I purchased my first camera the app was a bit rubbish (not as nearly as good as similar cheaper products) and I had to contact technical support a few times (which was amazingly good). However, over the last year the app has improved a lot and it is now better than other cameras I own. Another really nice thing is that the subscription is cheaper than a lot of other cameras, last year it cost me $50 (about £35 at the time) for the whole year (per recording camera). Without the subscription you can still use the camera for live feeds or record directly to SD card.There seems to be this “thing” with a lot of Chinese Wi-Fi technology that results in the devices only working on the 2.4Ghz band (probably licensing or something). Some users have a real problem with this. Most modern Wi-Fi routers are happy to use both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz and are generally configured to run on both by default. If you have a problem connecting these or any 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi devices to your network, just turn off the 5Ghz band and then switch it back on or to “both” afterwards. If you get stuck locate the router manual (RTFM). Regardless of the reasons for this issue, to maintain the best connection and best range it makes sense to have cameras running on 2.4Ghz anyway (you might want 5Ghz if you were using a 4K cam over a short distance).On the whole the camera does exactly what it should and I would definitely buy again (well I have several times). The only two things that it doesn’t currently offer is a web browser interface (I guess without one it is more secure) and notifications through email (for when my phone is off).I hope you find this information helpful.