Pulaski

My parents moved and bought a house in a cul-de-sac when I was 18months old, and they (well my mother, my father died in 2006) have lived in a cul-de-sac ever since (moved twice). When I bought my first house, that was in a cul-de-sac, and I have moved twice, and only ever lived as an owner-occupier in a cul-de-sac. When my sister bought her first house, that was in a cul-de-sac too.

Steerpike

I'm using Arlo cameras, inside only at the moment but want to put some outside. Arlo is a branded product of Netgear, so pretty mainstream. They provide remote access to the cameras from anywhere, no subscription (unless you want to store > certain amount). I've had mine for 3 years and they seem very reliable. Mine are USB powered, so need to plug into the wall but they have a range that are rechargeable.

My cameras do great at night, but they do so by switching to Infra-Red mode, which changes the image from color to b/w, and also relies on a built-in infrared light source; works great within the confines of a room, but not sure how effective it would be outside.

You say you had to check with Mrs P; Does your system not support 'browser' access (that is, on a laptop using a classic browser such as Chrome/Firefox/etc) in addition to being accessible through an 'app' on the iPhone or Android phone? I can certainly access my cameras on my phone using an app but I must prefer to view on my laptop which is obviously a bigger screen.

Good point about the cameras being stolen. I'm assuming any camera that is rechargeable is likely to be also easily removable from its mount for convenience, which seems counter to the idea of making them hard to steal!

I'm away from my home for extended periods and having a 'view' of the home is helpful. I'm most concerned about leaks, etc. I've since focused more on sensors; I have water leak sensors in at least 6 locations, as well as motion sensors. I've also recently put two wireless temperature sensors in my fridge/freezer ever since my fridge/freezer died on me recently. All my sensors are integrated into the Samsung SmartThings family of products, which requires a ~$100 hub in addition to each individual sensor. Samsung recently did a major major upgrade and I'm fearful that a lot of the work I put into monitoring and automation will be broken when I do the upgrade, which is mandatory by October ...

mrken30

I have some iSmartalarm cams (rebadged wyze) they work well for the money and the subscription is free. They also link into the alarm system that tells me when someone comes through the gate. Our neighbor uses a trail cam to monitor what animals go in and out of his yard. Seems to take reasonable picture.

I have a Tuya cam that has good night vision and I can use with my google hub.

None of the cams that I have used have had apps that are fast enough to check who is at the door unless they hang around for a bit.

Pulaski

That's a great question, and I will have to look into it. ..... The reason I needed to refer to Mrs P is that my phone is "full" and I was unable to load the app. My phone is over-due for an upgrade, and I hope to be upgrading within a few months. I am prepared to pay pretty much whatever is needed to get a phone with plenty of memory as it is very annoying to not be able to add apps, and only carry a small suset of my music to play in the car.

To MrKen's points, our Heimvision cameras are subscription free, unless we want to pay for on-line image storage, and the alerts and images are near instant, so we can see people real-time outside our home whether we are inside our home, or anywhere else that has internet accesss.

mrken30

That's something I had forgotten about. My iSmartalarm cameras only work on a phone app. My Tuya camera only works on devices that support chromecast. My Swann cameras used to work on a windows app, phone app and a browser. The browser compatibility ceased to function after a few browser upgrades.

I guess just buying a camera system isn't always simple. My Swann device does record direct to an VNR. I have a 1 TB disk volume I keep in the basement that it records to. A lot can email the photos or upload to an ftp server.

Steerpike

I've been using 'internet accessible cameras' since long before they were linked to 'smart phone apps', and this is a huge issue - obsolescence. Many of my earlier cameras became unusable when the software they came with stopped working (only worked on windows XP, etc etc). Even a simple webcam I plugged into a USB port on my laptop stopped working in windows 10. And now, my latest (and not exactly cheap!) Arlo cameras are threatening to stop work, thanks to the choice of 'flash' by the vendor. Every time I access the 'site' on my laptop, I'm warned that Flash support will end soon. I visit Arlo's website and they are totally mum about upgrading their viewer software for my model. They come up with a camera design, release a 'viewer' that goes with it, and then never spend time on either shortly thereafter. Obviously, buying a new camera is what they want you to do. I'm still hopeful an HTML5 site will be provided before flash support ends, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the smartphone version of the viewer will continue to work, but I hate using my phone for 'viewing' tasks due to the much smaller screen size.