Pearls of Wisdom: An Affordable Home Security Camera

Although I have thought about getting some sort of home security camera for awhile, it was not until Olivia’s dog trainer recommended that we get one that I finally acted.

He actually recommended a more expensive option (>$100) but I looked around Amazon and found the Wyze Cam V3  for under $35. It had good reviews, although all online reviews should be viewed with a large grain of salt.  I chose to order on Amazon because I like their easy, no shipping cost, return options.

The camera has been in place in our living room now for over a week and, so far, so good. I’ve included some sample screen captures of the living room, at various times of the day and night, at the end of this post.

The camera has all of the main features that I was looking for, including …

• Easy setup 
  • You can download the free, WYZE Cam app for either your smart phone or for your PC.  The app is then used to setup the camera.  In my case, the setup went quite smoothly.  I only ran into a small glitch when I was also trying to add my wife’s smart phone so she can access the camera as well. The capability certainly exists. It just seems to be a bit trickier to setup.
• Reliable remote access on my smart phone
  • As long as you have access to an internet signal on your phone, you are able to see what the camera sees in real time from anywhere.
• Good quality pictures including night vision
  • As the pictures I have included in this post should show, the picture quality is excellent.
  • You also have the option to increase or decrease the picture size by choosing either HD or SD picture quality options.
  • As the pictures should also show, the camera captures a very wide field of vision.
• Ability to not only hear audio but also to talk via the camera speaker
  • This is particularly important when monitoring our dog.  Not only can we hear her but we can also interact with her, although initially the disembodied voice has been the cause for a bit of consternation on Olivia’s part.  🙂
• Ability to capture video and audio for playback
  • Admittedly, I have not yet thoroughly explored this capability.  But there are options to save video to a “cloud” or to store it locally on a micro SD card that can be inserted into the camera.
  • There are options to set sensitivity for both motion capture and audio capture.  This allows you to only record video/audio when there is either motion or sound present, and you can control just how sensitive the camera is to either motion or sound.

The camera has a number of other options which I have not yet explored.

One thing I should note is that the camera must be connected to an electrical outlet via the included USB cable.  For this reason, it would more difficult to setup outside the home, although that is advertised as one of its capabilities.

For the price, it would seem hard to beat this little camera for quality and capability.  As I learn more about the camera, and as I have had it for a longer period of time to better assess its durability, I will update this post in the future.