I am looking for a camera to keep an eye on a pet left at home a couple of days a week

I thought a nice plug and play solution would be NEST or similar but they are £150 for an inside one and more for an outside one.

I know I really should be knocking one up with a Raspberry Pi but I don’t really have the time at the moment

There a some £30 ones on Amazon – does anyone have some real world experience? is the £120 difference really just marketing?

Ta

Use an old phone, with a suitable app.

I have the 720p version of this (Amazon often have the 720p reduced to £20);

https://www.amazon.co.uk/YI-Camera-Wireless-Security-Surveillance/dp/B074389PMT?th=1

I can access the stream from my phone and transmit audio to it, I can set alerts for when it detects activity, it even has IR emitters for night-vision mode.

As it’s an el-cheapo Chinese one I guess the Chinese government may be tapping into the stream but they’re likely get bored quite quickly.

We have a cheap £30 one and it works OK.

The image quality and frame rate is obviously not great especially low light but it’s good enough to see if the dog is asleep on the sofa or distressed from your smart phone..and you can pan the camera around or zoom in and that’s all we really need it for. It also has two way audio so you can listen and talk to the dog if needed.(the microphone and speaker are pretty rubbish but it’s a £30 device after all) Although it’s all fairly low fidelity its OK for the price.

How secure the cheap ones are is another matter.

The one we’ve got is this one I think..

https://www.amazon.com/Clever-dog-Wireless-security-Panoramic/dp/B0721MN8J9/ref=mp_s_a_1_25?ie=UTF8&qid=1537222564&sr=8-25&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dog+cameras

The camera I mentioned is reduced again;

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/yi-home-indoor-security-camera-720p-1999-with-voucher-sold-by-yi-official-store-uk-and-fulfilled-by-amazon-3052831

I bought a vstarcam from Amazon to use in my daughter’s room and it’s perfectly good. Not particularly high res but fine for what we needed.

We use IP Cam Viewer with it.

Whatever you get, make sure it has decent security as a lot are very easy to hack/obtain passwords/view.

Just ordered one of the £20 YI cameras linked above, will be used to spy on the dog lol.
If I can get a decent wifi signal in the garage I might try it in there too.

I bought this one from Amazon :

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07BVRMN75/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

picture quality seems very good, mic works, I thought there were some delays with speech from my phone being relayed but i am not so sure now.

Cats don’t respond to my calling them but have discovered that if I make a whistling blowing sound it spooks them so i can see them react.

Setting it up can take a bit of time as it seems to think about taking the panoramic set of photos for some time before actually doing it.

but it seems a bit of a bargain and I am going to buy some more for all their other hiding spots…

Thanks all – I have just ordered a Yi @ £20 using the hotdeals code that I would not have found unless pointed out to me.

Nick

My YI camera arrived today, took 5 minutes to set up.

Seems to be working ok – been spying on the dog and freaking him out by calling his name lol.

Will be ordering a second one and a WiFi extender for the garage.

Sounds good – we bought a Flir camera for the ‘outlaw’ so we can keep an eye on her. The added bonus is two days cloud recording included for free – i.e. we can check who has been in.

Might look at the Yi for my garage internally. We do have security cameras anyway, but they cover outside the house.

I got a Blink camera to watch out garage, it’s pretty good for the price.  Camera runs on AAs and connects to a base station over wifi, phone app to see the feed, etc.