I live out in the country here, and to be totally honest, it takes a while for the police to get here when there is an emergency, and there are very little to almost no lights around my home to help spot an intruder to make matters worse.
What’s more, the closest family to my home live more than 30 miles away, so I feel very vulnerable here at home when I am at home, but I have borderline anxiety when I am away from home always wondering if anything happened while I was gone. So I have a great need for a home security camera, and I need a security feature that will allow me to see in real time from any device, from anywhere, that will allow me to see exactly what is going on in my home at a moment’s notice. So far, nothing I have tried has done the trick and I have tried a number of cheap webcam products with DVR and live video functionality that just let me down.
One day I even set up my small Asus T-100 in front of my desk but when one of the kids closed the lid, the video recordings stopped. So I used my web cam with a long cord on it and placed it is just the right spot to see the largest part of the room, sadly the cat decided the cord would make a great toy and pulled it off the desk. I got great shots of the carpet but unfortunately this didn’t solve my needs. Even if the web cam idea had worked, the computer would have eventually gone to sleep, and that would be that. If all things did go right, I still had limited storage on my PC anyway to hold more than a few hours of footage at best.
I have often wondered if there was a better way to keep an eye on my home without having to buy an expensive home security surveillance system which could cost in the thousands of dollars and leave wires spread all over the place, not to mention a resolution so horrible it takes a miracle to make out the features of the invaders. That is until a friend of mine told me about a new camera designed to be portable (as in I can put it anywhere in my house), it is called, Spot Cam and you can read more about it on the SpotCam Website
I have taken a look at the features, and I have to say, it looks impressive. It does 720p quality video, can be wall mounted if so desired, and has an impressive viewing angle of 110 degrees. That’s a full 3rd of a circle, it would easily see everything from the entrance of my home plus the hallway, and my back door. As well, (I live in a small place but still big enough for a regular web cam to be allow someone to be hidden from view). The SpotCam connects via Wi-Fi, and needs a permanent power connection for it to work. Along with that, it supports a real time alert system that will send you a notification (through an app you can install on your phone) if it detects movement. It also has two-way audio where you can hear what happening on the video, or simply say something that will be transmitted through the SpotCam’s speakers.
I can see from the features list that is says it has night vision. This makes it ideal to put in an outdoor setting where it acts like an intrusion detection device that can detect and notice any intruders or guests coming to your door or on your property as well. Also all SpotCam footage is private by default but there you can opt to make your SpotCam video public too, they even have a showcase of Public SpotCam footage you can watch if you want to check out some live SpotCam feeds right now.
I really like that the Spot Cam does not have to be connected to my computer in order for it to work. It even allows me to speak to whomever may be intruding into my home and tell them to leave. And hey if they steal the camera, the videos are not stored locally so I know that they will get caught. The Spot Cam comes with the Free Forever package which is free live streaming and 1 day recording, for a small subscription you can get 3, 7 and 30 day recordings which also have the ability to put together time lapsed video to make for some amazing recordings too.
I can’t wait till my new Spot cam arrives in the mail, until then, we will just have to wait and I will get back to you with more details.
