I did a bit of searching and could not find this topic. I’ll start by saying that I have only one side of the story and just my experience… I have 16 total cameras at my home, recording 24 hours a day. Of which 10 are Foscam and 6 are Amcrest.
So it turns out that most of us (in the US) have been getting Foscam cameras sold to local retailers (including Amazon) by a US distributor foscam.us, nothing wrong with that…
However foscam.us is claiming that Foscam is going around them and selling to US retailers directly, so now Foscam.us doesn’t really sell Foscam anymore.
The US distributor now only sells Amcrest. They claim they are now Amcrest. It’s confusing and I don’t fully understand.
Also, for most Foscam cameras. The latest firmware that came out in April puts an unremovable watermark in the lower right hand corner of your stream that says FOSCAM. Yes, I said unremovable. I’ve called support and they said they have already passed this issue to their engineering teams. It’s been 3 months since I first called and still no update.
In closing I don’t 100% understand what is going on between the two foscams, but I don’t plan on doing business with Foscam any longer due to the watermark issue and that fact that they don’t have any 3MP or 4MP outdoor bullet cameras available.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
3
There’s nothing new with “Foscam” (the China based company) that designed and manufactures these (not sure about their relationship with Blue Iris and Armcrest).
Foscam US was just a licensee of the product and brand, and perhaps had a poorly written contract because they have always sabotaged other Foscam sources (and vice versa).
The cleanest way out of this for Foscam US is to drop the brand entirely and let each company establish their own reputation.
Yes, I agree. I’ve moved on from Foscam. Just sending the heads up. I’m a bit unhappy about eh foscam watermark on my cameras, nothing I can really do about it.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
5
It won’t downgrade. By the way, this is a close up of the water mark.
It’s not huge, but it’s not their camera to watermark.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
7
With persistence and effort, there’s likely a hack that will downgrade or remove the watermark.
I agree it is rude, but at least the customer can choose not to apply the firmware, unlike SmartThings (and many other online products…).
If SmartThings decided to put advertising or whatever in the mobile App, for example, and make old versions incompatible with a Cloud upgrade, there’s nothing we could do about it. It’s permitted by the Terms of Use.
