y-cam homemonitor ending free cloud recording

buglawton

The last undeleted clip is 52s long, I guess that's the default. It's of a spider walking past the camera in the small hours a couple of cm from the camera, under IR light. The reaction time is good, captures as soon as something enters the frame.

tony359

I've just bought a second hand Y-Cam in addition to the one I already have and found with disappointment that I now have to pay an arm and a leg for the second hand camera to record - and even more when my second camera runs out of the "lifetime" subscription. Unbelievable.

garymguk

You pay a premium for these cams, i paid £141 for what is now a webcam, they can be bought for a few quid!

The very least y-cam can do is allow the cameras to work as a normal ip camera so that I can make my own recordings. A simple firmware update would allow this. Advantage to customer? A working security camera. Disadvantage to y-cam? Lost revenue from all existing customers.


WOW!

Crazy customer service from Amazon. I Wrote email informing them of Y-cams change of service, while reading this thread. Came back and posted this. Went to read my email and saw this reply from Amazon:

"From your email I can understand your concern that you received the item "Y-cam HomeMonitor HD/Wi-Fi Wireless Video Monitoring Camera with Free Online Recording" but it doesn't work properly.
We can certainly understand that this was not what you expected when you placed your order and we never intended to let this happen.
As our valued customer, your satisfaction is our top priority and we certainly do not intend to cause inconvenience to you.!!!8203;!!!8203;!!!8203;
I kindly requested you to please return the item and we will issue a full refund for the item without any delay.
To serve you my best, I have created a prepaid return label for you.
Please to be inform you that you won't charge for returning this item."

I purchased the camera in 2014!

klejofas

Y-cam home-monitor is a joke.I asked them if I can get normal access to the camera in this situation, they replay that it's not possible and camera can only work as cloud camera (the same what someone here posted). ofc it's not true and they are greedy liars, in my model of Y-cam HomeMonitor HD WiFi Security Camera 720p which has latest firmware according to website (1.02 (build 20130322)) was pretty easy to got what I want. Camera uses standard software from not cloud version just a bit modified. Camera has vulnerability found in 2012!! (they fixed it in some models, but not in cloud version camera). This vulnerability gives unauthorised access to camera for anyone who can reach webserver of camera, search for CVE: CVE-2014-1900. Find local ip address of your camera, normally you will see only firmware upgrade page, url looks like PADDRESS/ en/ login. asp, but whn change on IPADDRESS/ en/ main. asp you should see normal login to camera, username is always the same admin, password you can get as described in CVE: CVE-2014-1900 and is simple request GET /./en/ account / accedit. asp? item=0 HTTP/1.1and response is

.......
            <td width=40%>User name:</td>
            <td width=60%>[COLOR=Red]admin[/COLOR]</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Password:</td>
            <td><input type=password name=PASSWD size=32 maxlength=22 value="[COLOR=Red]YOURPASSWORD[/COLOR]"></td>

;-) and you know username which is admin and password is long text coded in Base64, you can login to camera settings using them now and watch stream and do whatever you want (eg change quality of video changing bitrate, y-cam default set it low to minimize bandwidth and space on their storage).
It's not the only way to get password. In fact you only need to know mac of camera, search for SIK-2016-045 Gigaset smarthome camera vulnerability, my y-cam password is made in the same way (the same Chinese producer I guess). Bad news is that you can't change this password or username and everyone who get mac of your camera can literally everything.
In this situation camera can be use only without internet access and in secure wifi or better cable connection.
As you can see on this screenshot all options are available, you can disconnect it from cloud removing proxy address in settings. sorry I cant pos screenshot , I'm not sure if recording on sd card works, but slot is on pcb under housing on pcb. If someone want to more serial connection pins are on pcb if someone know what to do with this type of access to firmware ;-)
My recommendation disconnect this camera and buy something secure and from some serious company. I wrote this week or two ago to y-cam but they don't respond so I decide let people know how unsecure their cameras are.

iDragon

Interesting to know!, and confirmed many suspicions I had, just glad amazon took it back with little fuss, I've since got an Arlo, which feels like a much nicer piece of hardware all round.

longwalks1

buglawton wrote: »

Xiaomi Mi series of cameras. If you can work your way around a mostly-English part-Chinese app, movement triggered MP4 clips are held in their cloud for free, time and quantity limitations obviously apply. I tried one from one of those sellers like Gearbest. Good camera and system with IOT integration possible too. You never know how long the free storage will last of course. The cameras are cheap if ordered direct from China, so not too much to lose if the storage deal vanishes.

https://www.gearbest.com/ip-cameras/pp_356786.html

Looks a good camera, is there anything similar on amazon for up to the same price (£70)? Ive always found amazon to be great for returns, even took back 3 Y-Cam after I'd had them maybe 2 years without any fuss when the free storage ended

buglawton

My Xiaomi Mi is no longer recommendable, it's had a number of firmware updates but is prone to go offline, needing a restart or even a complete reset.

There does not seem to be enough profit margin for anyone to sell a cheap security webcam with a usable but free cloud package. Might even go back to using an old Android phone with a security cam app, that simply email some still images of movement is detected.

S0litaire

FYI
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/927120-diy-wifi-cam-tutorial/

You could always "build your own" camera system with a few RPi camera modules, Raspberry pi Zero W's and an rpi3+ (as well as a few odds and ends if you want it to look tidy or more professional)

Whole multiple camera system come to around the same as a single one of those cameras with the added bonus of no ongoing fee's and you choose where the data is held.