YI Home Camera 2 Reviewed

[thiggins]

The YI Home Camera 2 gets an A for effort, but it just can't run with the big dogs.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

 

[Razor512]

Recording to a remote location certainly has its benefits, I just wish the costs were not so high.

For the cost of services such as nestcam, you can literally pay for a VPS that has more storage (many offering 250GB storage, 512MB RAM, gigabit connection, ~2TB bandwidth per month, are largely in the $5-$7 per month range , in addition to root access in order to run whatever else you want. It seems like what that camera needs, is the ability to access the video stream locally (for those with their own NVR solutions), as well as offer an option to effectively have it record directly to a samba share either locally, or over an openVPN connection to a remote server, then simply have it manage when to delete old content to maintain a desired amount of free space, or have the server run a command each day to delete files in the video folder which are older than 30 days.

Based on the 24/7 recording, nestcam estimates that you will use up 140GB of bandwidth per month, in that case. If a user needs 30 day recording, for less for $5 per month less than the nest cam 30 day plan, or about the same price as the yearly subscription of the 30 day plan, a user can run a VPS that offers 1TB storage, 4GB RAM, 4 cores, 5TB bandwidth, which should be able to handle 1-2+ cameras dumping video to it.

While these solutions will not be as elegant as what you would get from nestcam, especially considering that they charge for each additional camera you add, it does make me question the pricing. Why is it so expensive?

Since most homes needing to effectively monitor the area, will need 4 or more cameras, imagine if you wanted 4 cameras on that service. It would cost $25 per month for 4 cameras to have 10 day recording, or $75 per month for 4 cameras recording to a 30 day plan. A single 1TB VPS could potentially handle 8 cameras for $25 per month, e.g., https://1tbvps.com/

Overall, the pricing needs to come down for cloud reliant IP cameras, or they need to give users alternatives for storing the footage.

 

[sfx2000]

I find this use case interesting.. it can work the other way - e.g. the burglar watching to see when folks are not at home...

"I'm reminded of a local news story not long ago where a couple had two Nest Cams to watch their pets throughout the day. Two burglars broke in to the house and eventually found the Nest Cams and took them, but not before all of the video was uploaded to the cloud."

 

[Paualsh112]

After seeing recent reports of car break-ins and garage thefts in my area, I decided to look into developing a camera system for the house. Knowing that a quality/professional security camera & recording system can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, the emerging market of inexpensive, wireless, Internet-capable products available will suit my needs perfectly.