Top positive review
13 people found this helpful
These have so far been the perfect camera for us to remotely scan our house while away.
By SixtyFour on Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2016
I now have four of these cameras and the oldest, maybe 18 months old, is still going strong although it took some work to get to like the first one. Since my objective was to have a pan/tilt camera accessible from the web and not spend a fortune I looked at a dozen cameras before deciding to try a Foscam. I'm still looking at newer models but with the price point falling and the cameras stability and abilities remaining strong I've picked up more each time I see a lower price. There is apparently a newer brand which is trying to take over the Foscam name and customer base so be careful what you're reading about and downloading. Even their web pages are tricky and you can easily be on the other guys download page without realizing it, but none of it is compatible. They just want to steal Foscam Shenzhen customers. The Foscam app is 'ok' but you have to sign into their chinese based server to use it. I did at first to see if I liked the cameras and then ultimately switched to the LiveCamsPro app for a few bucks. It's a much better app and you are only linking to your own IP to access your video. As soon as I switched apps I changed all of my camera internal IPs and passwords. Make sure you have the latest firmware installed. This is not an easy task but if you download and review a handful of the most recent patches and naming conventions it will eventually make sense. And you can't upgrade directly to the latest, you have to progress through each patch if the version on your camera is older. Take your time and you'll get there. You do have the option of giving Foscam access to your PC and cameras to set everything up, and this seems to work out great, but I don't want to give anybody,let alone a Chinese company, direct access to any of my hardware/network. Just make sure you understand what they're doing and then re-secure your network and cameras at least by changing passwords Making your cameras visible out on the internet is not extremely difficult but it's not easy either if you don't know much about your homes network and how your router works. In simplistic terms, any device on your network will be assigned an IP address and you need this to be 'seen' outside of your house to access your camera. You can do this by using port forwarding and an external dynamic DNS host, such as DuckDNS, which is free. DuckDNS is what your app connects to to find your homes IP, which then can see your 'exposed' camera IP/port. This is also why using non-default ports and secure passwords is REQUIRED else nasty people can get into your homes network and onto your pc's or, at the very least, use your own cameras to watch you. These cameras can also allow you to set up motion or sound alerts although I have no use for that with animals in the house. But you can also talk through them if needed. I also do not use other features such as setting patterns for the camera scan a room, but this and other options are there if you want them. With the price dropping to around 60 these days it's hard not to at least try one if you haven't already. UPDATE JUNE 2017: I now have 7 of this model in use around my house and I've not had a single issue. We have a cat door (with chip sensor- great item also!) and the cats can go out whenever they like. So to keep an additional eye on them whenever we're away I put one of these cameras outside about 1ft under the front porch roof. I don't recommend anyone do this since the camera isn't weatherproof and the image gets 100% washed out in bright light but it has been very helpful to us even with some limitations. I'm also very pleasantly surprised that it hasn't been affected at all by freezing temps, blowing snow/rain, moisture in the lens, etc since it was installed out there 6 months ago. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but I use LiveCamsPro on my iPhone and it's been flawless..
Top critical review
9 people found this helpful
Bad camera, bad software, bad customer service
By C. J. Sellek on Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2015
[Edit: Since I posted this, Foscam commented in an attempt to show how much they care about their customers. They asked me to get in touch with them, which is funny because I totally mention in this very review that I already tried this and they shafted me. Wait...they wouldn't just be mass-commenting on every negative review to make it look like they actually care, could they? Gasp! Never! They also linked me to a page that supposedly would help me with my issue. A PAGE THAT WAS BROKEN. See the comments below for details and proof.] This product is easily one of the worst things I've ever spent money on. To make a long story short, it gave me problems straight out of the box (set up would not have been possible if I did not work in IT), half-worked for 4 months, and then gave out completely. It now only works if I reset the camera every few hours, which, besides being unnecessary, I can't do since I use it as a video monitor for my 7-month-old and I much prefer it when she's not screaming because daddy just woke her up so that he could keep his eye on her. Tried contacting their customer service to make use of the warranty they have with the product. Turns out they do not give out refunds for their poor-quality work, but they'd be more than happy to send me a replacement unit that will have the same issues (at least half the issue is with the really buggy software that you have to use with the camera that won't get fixed with a camera replacement). The long of it: Pulled it out of the box the day it showed up, glad that we'd be able to make sure our daughter wasn't going crazy at night whenever she started crying. Found a CD in there, along with some instructions on how to set your camera up "easily." They describe this camera as "Plug & Play". They *should* describe this camera as "Plug & Die Horrifically From The Stress Of Dealing With This Awful Camera". (Unless, of course, they have a very different definition of the word "Play" than I do. If that's the case, then I apologize.) The software that was supposed to automatically detect my camera didn't work, so I had no clue what the IP address for the camera was (which is step 1 in setting it up). Okay. That's annoying. Thankfully, I work in IT and I knew to pull up the DHCP server page on my router and just started plugging in the addresses that were actively in use until one worked. If this last sentence means nothing to you, good luck setting this thing up. After fighting through the incredibly poor UI in their setup software for an hour (an HOUR - I really do need to discuss the definition of "plug & play" with Foscam, apparently), I finally got it up and running. When I pulled it up to test it, the time on the screen was completely wrong. It wasn't a set amount of time off, either. Over the next several weeks, it turned out that it would just (seemingly) choose a random time to display and then do that. ("3:38 AM, I think", it would say to itself and then giggle as it displayed that time knowing full well that the sun was out.) I once looked at it and saw it displaying 12:10 AM as the time (again, wasn't even close; it was like 3:00 PM). When I looked again, it was saying it was 12:08 AM. Wut. I watched it for a bit as it counted up for a few minutes before hopping back to 12:08 AM and starting over. It apparently just gets stuck in a time loop now and again. Good luck using the "nifty" feature that allows you to tell your camera to start recording at a certain time. If it makes it to that time at all instead of just hopping back to 12:08 AM every few minutes, it'll most certainly be nowhere near the time you actually told it to start recording. At this point, I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. However, I had spent the money and so I sucked it up and decided I had to deal with it (also, I was out of forget-me-nows). Over the following 4 months, my wife and I put up with UIs that would frustrate Satan, a video feed that would randomly lock up without reason, and enough connection issues to make Time Warner Cable jealous (seriously, though, sometimes it just wouldn't connect and we'd be video-feed-less). Finally, last week, it died almost completely. I now have to reset the camera every single night by unplugging it and plugging it back in to get a connection to it at all. And the connection we finally do get dies during the night and leaves us looking at a frozen screen. I contacted Foscam today to get a refund on a clearly worthless product and they said I'd have to go through Amazon if I want a refund, which I'm pretty certain is not possible after 4 months of owning something [Edit: The return window ends within a month, something I'm sure Foscam is aware of.]. They would, however, be very happy to send me a replacement devil camera that will likely have all the same hardware issues and will definitely have all the same software issues, since you can't really replace software. I will never again purchase another Foscam product. I strongly urge you to not even buy this one. So, basically, what I'm saying is: Foscam. Not even once.
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