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THE ALM

Might be of interest to some of you.

Great deal on the Withings Home camera, 50% off so only €99 and details here.

Already have one of these set up and works very well so have ordered a second. A good clear picture which I can view anywhere from the app. so useful for remote monitoring or would work well has a baby monitor

I have also added a few IFTTT's which will turn on/off the camera if I am leaving or entering the house. Have also set up one to email me if it senses any motion.

Have ordered the Hive heating so hopefully I would be able to link the two to turn on/off the heating.

bk

Oh, this system looks quite good!

Has nice integration with IFTTT that I've love to see Canary and Logitech Ciricle to have.

THE ALM

Have been using one for the last year bk and not too many problems. Some complaints about the app on android although I haven't had many problems and probably just needs a bit of work from withings end. At the offer price I have ordered a second which I will position to cover the outside.

As mentioned I have IFTTT services running that when my phone leaves an area it will turn on the camera and turn off when I enter again which seems to work fine and another services that sends an email when motion detected.

I see you have a few Hue set up so should be able to have them turn off and on when the camera detect motion.

I tried setting one where I would get a phonecall in the camera went off line although this seems to be restricted to US numbers only.

No doubt more IFTTT applets will be added.

bk

Thanks THE ALM, have you tried using it as a baby monitor?

The reviews on amazon don't seem great, lots of complaints of it constantly going down and needing rebooting and it not picking up baby sounds when in baby monitor mode!

I already have a Canary and a Logitech Circle ordered just two days ago, but I was tempted by the baby monitor features, but not so sure now.

THE ALM

No baby in the house so haven't used it as such.

I had left in on Active Monitoring 24/7 and just turned on/off motion and noise detection when in or out of the house, with the IFTTT it just turns the active monitoring off or on now depending if I am in or out of the house.

I don't recall ever having to reboot it when I have left it on but maybe that is it being in baby monitor mode dependant.

J.pilkington

I'm torn on this. The angry Amazon reviews are based on these customers having purchased at €200 and having high expectations

Having read the reviews and accepting the limitations (not a security camera, no record and playback function, 1 frame per second photo, not full 1080p resolution(which seems to be related to withings disabling due to bandwidth so camera is capable)) I think I'll purchase as €100 is a bit of a steal.

I may come to regret it in the future that I didn't throw an additional €100 at it and get a better €200 camera

bk

I'm equally torn. I think if you are looking for a security camera, then Canary reduced to £110 on amazon might be better. It has superb picture quality, very good motion detection and even has a 90 decibel alarm that you can activate remotely.

What lets Canary down is:
- Lack of integration with anything else, no IFTTT, etc. is disappointing
- While it has microphones, it won't alert you if there it detects a noise. I was very disappointed about this, when I bought it I thought it would if it detected the non connected smoke or security alarm went off, but unfortunately not. Other security cams like Nest, Logic circle and Withings Home all claim to do this, which is why I've now ordered the Logi Circle, we will see how that goes.
- It gives you 12 hours of free recording which is fine, however if you buy more cameras, it comes out of the same 12 hours. So if you have two cameras, you only get 6 hours each, etc. Pretty idiotic IMO, stops me from buying more then one camera!

Having said all that, as a security camera it works extremely well, with great picture quality and reliably without too many annoying notifications. The fact that the core of the product works so well is what makes all the other stuff annoying. They got the hard part right, but seem to have fallen down on the easy stuff.

The Logitech Circle seems to be a really interesting security camera and I'm looking forward to trying it out, specially it's sound monitoring and notifications.

This Withings Home camera also seems to be very interesting. Specially it's baby monitoring ability. I'm very tempted to try it out just for that.

It just goes to show, that no one company has really got everything right in the home security/baby camera market.

J.pilkington

My requirements are baby related so the night light / lullaby / air monitoring are a real perk

bk

J.pilkington wrote: »

My requirements are baby related so the night light / lullaby / air monitoring are a real perk

Yeah, the same reason I'm interested in it too so.

THE ALM

Sorry I can't be of more help regarding the baby monitoring, might try that function out tonight and see what happens, see if I can lull myself off to sleep.

We use it for security monitoring which seems to work fine, get notifications if noise or motion are detected. It will flash red if the air quality drops and this seems only to happen when cooking which makes sense, although camera not located in kitchen the room is open plan and it picks up the difference in quality.

Don't have anything to campare against but the picture quality seems good to me. Haven't had much use for the two way audio although I have freaked the other half out a time or two so it does work.

I can review a 24hr period through the app or download the video clip to the phone and export to the pc for viewing etc. The only thing with this is it is in 5min blocks, I should trial the cloud storage option and see if it outputs the full 24hr rather than the timelapse. I see on the website that it says 48hr timelapse, only getting 24hrs, I might reboot to see if this gives me the 48hr.

J.pilkington

Out of stock now

J.pilkington

We've had this monitor now for 5 months so I'm going to post a review. We have been using it for our small lad and I'm a really happy customer so far.

Positives;
- very easy to set up - great tilt feature
- you don't need the add on service of pay monthly where you can look back over prior recordings so no ongoing costs
- camera quality is fine, it's not hd and to be honest hd is not needed and would bring its own set of problems
- night vision is very good
- it hasn't malfunctioned since purchase, always a good thing!
- I travel a lot with work so great to be able to dial in and see the little lad.

Negatives;
- the air quality metre isn't a lot of use (it gives poor air quality readings when we know it's not the case, at least nowhere near bad for a child) and we generally ignore it.
- music monitor isn't the best, the monitor should be able to filter this out but can't so if you are watching the monitor the music is blaring through
- light isn't the best (along with most other monitors) so we continue to use a hue go light

As far as im aware the price has remained at €199 since post Black Friday, not sure if it's worth this but definitely was a bargain at the the €99 I paid.