Here is my delima, I want an indoor camera that I can set to only record based on motion when I’m asleep or when nobody is home. I have a D-link outside and would prefer to stay in one ecosystem, but you only have the option of either recording any time it senses motion or recording only during a single scheduled time frame every day. For my outside camera that works, but it doesn’t for an indoor camera. I got the D-link camera manager to work briefly, but after a few hours it stopped and I could not get it working again. I do not care about using the camera as a motion sensor for other devices. I’m only looking for one camera at the moment, but I may want to add more in the future. Would the Samsung Smartcam be enough for what I want? Can I get away with one of the cheaper Foscam cameras and get it work reliably? Don’t really need to view video in the ST app, just want motion based recording when ST is set to Night or Away. Thanks for your help.
Smartcam will work well, flir a close second.
You can use CoRE to create a basic piston to control when it records with simple if/then and set it to only run hours you are asleep.
Don’t trust any of the cams to be off when they say they are. You can stop a dropcam from “transmitting” but it doesn’t really stop. Simple solution is put smart plugs on them. With no power to them you know they are off. You can have the smart plugs turn on when you are gone and off when you are home.
Another alternative is Aeon labs micro smart switch, depending on what type of setup you end up going with.
Some of us use presets on cameras that have PTZ.
I have a couple of foscam cameras set up this way right now. Preset 1 is used for when we’re home and points the cameras towards the ceiling. Preset 2 is used when we’re away and points the cameras towards the living areas.
The best part of this setup is that you don’t have to worry about whether or not the cameras are actually recording or transmitting when you’re home. You can clearly see for yourself what mode the camera is set to by just looking at it.
The main reason I don’t want it recording all the time is to keep the internal memory from filling up and over writing itself daily and or to keep the amount of data transmitted down (if it’s getting pushed to a cloud site). I had not thought about putting the camera on a switch to turn it on and off. Have any of you experienced any issues with it reconnecting to your wireless network due to this?
I don’t have it setup up like that but if you go into your router settings and manually assign the camera a static ip then it should have no problem at all reconnecting to the network.
If you are worried about storage have you considered setting up a basic personal cloud and having recordings go there? Depending on what you are using for your network its pretty simple and inexpensive to toss on 2tb external usb 3.0 or 3.1 hard drive, most of time right on router. Majority of firmware have step by step nas walkthroughs even.
Blinks work great for this. I have 5 and @RBoy 's app is great at managing them. Mine come one when we leave and turn off when we arrive using SHM. We can manually check them as well. The other nice thing is they have a blue led on the front so if you ever question is they are on you can easily tell.
Coming in a bit late, but FWIW …
I use several of the Samsung Smartcam HD Plus cameras (the one that Costco sells and SmartThings does not support). Because I don’t want them recording us when we are home (call me paranoid), I have them each connected to a smart switch controlled by SmartThings. I use Smart Lighting to turn them on overnight and to turn them on or off as my home/away mode changes.
I have never had the cameras be unavailable (when powered on obviously), so I don’t think powering them off and on is causing any networking problems).
Thanks for the reply, seems like this sort of a setup, camera plugged into a smart switch, might be the best option for me, however for the time being I will hold off on this in the hopes that SmartThings will integrate with more camera options and hopefully will fix the broken link with the D-link cameras.