CCTV/Security wireless outdoor cameras recommendations please. 25 June 2022 at 8:28AM edited 26 June 2022 at 9:01AM in Techie Stuff 11 replies 244 views

magan

We want to put a couple of outdoor cameras to check the family home abroad. It's in a village, electricity at times is unreliable, so it needs to be wireless, we also need a battery (probably lithium battery) that lasts at least a year (hopefully more) as we will not be able to change it. We hope to connect them to a mobile phone app and just be able to check it from wherever we are. But we don't want to depend of cloud storage or monthly subscriptions. I would really appreciate if anybody could give recommendations, hopefully not crazily expensive. Thank you so much in advance.

diystarter7

Depends on how many times its activated/viewed etc.

Ring doorbells appear to have good reviews but personally I'd not go for the battery. 
Ring also has indoor batter cams which I guess you could place in a window or a wired one for that matter easy to set up.

magan

Yes, I heard good reviews from Ring doorbells but battery life is essential to us, as we cannot travel often to change it and electricity is also very unreliable.

diystarter7

Btw re Ring gadgets. I have an android phone and alerts are delyaed/missed possibly due to old phone and/or internet speeds. However, two of my children have Ring cams/etc and they have the apple mobiles and their alerts are within a second - not sure if its the mobiles/net/etc.

Norman_Castle

magan said:

We want to put a couple of outdoor cameras to check the family home abroad. It's in a village, electricity at times is unreliable, so it needs to be wireless, we also need a battery (probably lithium battery) that lasts at least a year (hopefully more) as we will not be able to change it.

Are you expecting it to run for a year just from a battery? A mains powered system with a back up battery is a possibility.

matelodave

Friends of ours have got these which may be worth your consideration https://www.screwfix.com/brand/blink/?cm_sp=managedredirect-_-security-_-blink. I dont know what storage facilities they provide but like anything they'll still need to talk to the wifi router, so you'd need a battery back up to keep that running if you've got an iffy mains supply.

A mate of mine monitors his boat with an old mobile phone running an app called ALFRED which also seem to work pretty well.

Its like everything, define your requirements and your budget to decide what you want, need or can afford

bengalknights

you could also use blink cameras with the solar panels

Andy_L

Does the house have broadband for the camera to connect to or does it need to connect directly to a mobile phone network?

JustAnotherSaver

I was looking in to what sounds like the same.

Google Eufycam.

Some of their products claim 365day battery life however if you hop on YouTube the reviews say that isn't the case.

BUT

Also hopping on YouTube - you can connect up a Eufy solar panel to the camera so that (if you get a reasonable amount of sun) then battery power isn't even an issue.

Or you can look at the S40 camera which has an inbuilt solar panel anyway - just your footage is stored differently (on the cam itself instead of the homebase).

KnownMaynard

I've got Eufy 2K cameras at home. They do advertise 365 battery life but realistically I will be fine if they last half that. I suppose they won't be triggered frequently in a holiday home so may last well. The other advantage of Eufy is the recordings are stored on a 'homebase' connected to the router, not in the cloud, so they are more secure and don't require you to sign up to a monthly subscription for the cloud-type devices. 

shiraz99

One thing you should seriously look at when purchasing one of these systems is the privacy and data policies you sign up to. Blink (being an Amazon product) are one of the worst for this, if you read their privacy policy document you might be shocked at just how much data you agree to share with Amazon. Eufy are one of the better camera systems for this.