Dropcam Wi-fi Wireless Video Monitoring Camera (Only) Black - Pre-Owned

*UPDATE 12/4/2012*Picture quality of course drops off in low light. The infrared, when lighting is low, illuminates well, but motion will blur severely. This is certainly not uncommon with cameras, and it is a non-issue for a baby monitor, but it would decrease substantially identifying a person moving around at night. Day time picture quality is great, and it just generally goes down as light drops; even before IR kicks in if it's evening and you're relying on lamps the quality will be worse than daytime. Just something worth knowing.*UPDATE 11/29/2012*I am installing a second dropcam. I ended up getting two for great deals over Black Friday weekend, and will now have two running. This will be on a 2 MBPS upload connection. I had the one cam running on 1 MBPS without issue but upgraded to 2 yesterday (only partially related to the purchase of second dropcam--I never tried both on 1 MBPS and in theory that amount of bandwidth is sufficient, but I like a larger buffer).-----*ORIGINAL REVIEW 11/26/2012*I have some essential networking skills, and I have had for some months now an IP dome camera mounted outside my home, with the conventional FTP site, port-forwarding, etc. It's feature-rich, but also more cumbersome to manage and retrieving the video/images is more difficult remotely, particularly since I have no PC running dedicated software. I was looking for a low-cost inside HD-capable camera and after a poor experience with another cheap IP camera the simplicity of the Dropcam and generally favorable reviews (not just on Amazon) convinced me to give it a go.What the Dropcam HD promises is an HD image delivered with the utmost of simplicity (720p--though of course not all HD is made the same). The multiple demo cameras on the Dropcam site give a proper idea of what you'll end up seeing.Dropcam.com claims 60 seconds after un-boxing to see a footage. I took longer: 2 minutes, possibly even 3, though not longer than that. Anybody who has ever configured an IP camera knows you're not "finished" 3 minutes after unwrapping it, but with this you quite literally are.The hardware of this camera is priced very competitively. The unit is very small. I find the microphone decent. It's a bit fuzzy but you'll easily pick up what's within reasonable video range in a room. Speaker is not bad, either. I will say the 2 way communication needs work; talking comes out clean on the other end but basically locks up some frames on your viewing end while it's happening. Night-vision is usable: a totally pitch-black room will be illuminated sufficiently with the IR lights that automatically turn on.PROS:- competitively priced hardware- industry-leading (actually industry-defining) simplicity of setup- web-based DVR means no worry about a network attached storage device yourself, so everything is automatically backed up AND accessible elsewhere. This is a MAJOR plus of this unit. The vast majority of off-site backups people use are clips of limited length and/or quality. With this 24/7 is sent off-site. That means you miss nothing, and also it's immune to catastrophe/theft.- apple and android apps. I have no android devices. I have tried the iphone and ipad apps and both work well over wi-fi. Over Verizon 3G the iphone app works quite well. Frame rate is sufficient; it's genuinely usable.- wi-fi connection seems decent. It can pause every several minutes, but I am not sure if that's because the unit at this time is two floors above my router or not. Even still, it's no great loss. Dropcam claims that the camera has a 15 minute internal buffer and can catch up if a temporary connection loss happens. I've not tested this.CONS:- monthly DVR cost of $10 is a bit high. $5 on each subsequent camera is a nice deal though. I'd love to know how many people use this without a DVR but I am guessing a high percentage pay for the service, else there is no history function- unfortunately there is no "advanced" settings for those who want them. This means no way to customize sensitivity of alerts (either on or off) and, shockingly, no way to schedule when the camera is on or off, which could save you (and dropcam) bandwidth and also know that an eye isn't watching you as you're in front of the tv all night :)- cannot access a NAS drive. I understand that this is low on the Dropcam priority list and I appreciate their audience. I don't ding it for this because I knew it had no support for anything but its own DVR. It would be a nice feature, but Dropcam would have to raise the camera price I suspect, as the monthly subscription rate must be subsidizing purchase price to some degree.HONEST CONCLUSION:I am aware of nothing else near this price point that is at all reliable, simple to get going, has 24/7 off-site storage, and a *usable* iphone/ipad app (not garbage thrown together by a junior developer). There are LOTS of products in this market place and if your standards are at all high I suspect the huge majority of them will be exercises in frustration. The Dropcam in my limited time using it (two days at time of this review creation) more or less delivers on what it claims. If you are expecting a high quality DVD-or-better type image at this price point your expectations are unreasonable. Look at the market: it just isn't there yet.

I recently purchased a Dropcam HD from Dropcam's direct website and one from Amazon. I originally planned on only keeping the item from Amazon because Dropcam's website said it would ship in a week in a half, but it actually came sooner. After a day of using Dropcam HD, I knew I wasn't going to return the other one. It literally took about 45 seconds to setup and I was on my way finding out where I wanted to place it.What to expect so you won't be disappointed:-The "HD" isn't HD like on a Canon Mark III or your HDTV, and I find it hilarious that people would think it is. Seriously, it's a streaming WiFi camera, this is as good as it's going to get as of right now. It has great picture quality for what it is.-For anyone that wants to use this to peer outside: You can't place it in front of a window and still use the night vision capability. The IR LEDs will reflect off the glass, rendering a big white orb of nothing in the middle of your screen. However, I keep night vision off and I can still see what's going on with my porch light on.-If you have a big house, you might be surprised to find out that the camera will keep going out because the router is too far away. I attempted to monitor the other side of my home with the second camera, but because there are too many thick walls including brick between the router and the camera, I just couldn't place it where I wanted but this really isn't Dropcam's fault.-If you have DSL or the basic/standard cable modem plan, your internet WILL be slow with 2 cameras. It was fine with one, but as soon as I put up the other one it was just too much for the amount of bandwidth I was allowed. It was tough having both cameras connected and trying to actually view them, all with the same connection. Again, this isn't Dropcam's fault, but don't expect your surfing to be the same with so much going on. I needed to upgrade anyways.-If you want to secure a Dropcam to a roof, the cable will be visible from the bottom of the camera in order to keep the picture upright. Hard to explain unless you have the camera in front of you, but apparently they are working on supplying an option to flip the image so that the cable can be hidden behind the stand. You only have to worry about this if you are placing the stand upside down somewhere.-The talk feature isn't loud at all. If the camera is in a corner somewhere, don't expect it to be heard it very clearly. I don't use nor need this feature so this wasn't really a problem for me.-The DVR system will sometimes be really laggy. I believe it has something to do with their servers/high traffic because half the time it's easy to go back and check something and the other half it just loads and loads and loads and I have to come back to it in 15 minutes for it to work.-The camera becomes unreliable if you are moving it around. I found this to be pretty annoying while trying to find out where I was going to place it. The more you move it around, the more it keeps disconnecting. I realized that it takes about 10-15 minutes after moving around or plugging in to get a solid connection and not disconnect. Just keep that in mind while setting up.-This camera isn't good for someone that isn't very tech savvy. I sometimes have to troubleshoot such as closing the iPhone app and reopening for the cameras to not show "disconnected", something that isn't too bad but it seems like it would be a headache for a person that doesn't fully know how to use a computer or the app. I'm sure someone would probably call tech support if an event on the DVR is taking too long to load instead of just refreshing the page or waiting a few minutes. I really wouldn't get this for my mother or grandmother.-There is no fast-forwarding function on the DVR system so if the camera didn't trigger a motion marker or you're trying to going back to a certain point where there is constant motion (say 5 hours), you're seriously going to have to sit through it in real time, or download 5 separate 1-hour long videos to open in a video playback program that does have a fast-forwarding function. This is what I found to be the most annoying and needs to be implemented ASAP.All in all I found this camera really satisfying for what I need it for. I think most of it's flaws are not hardware based which gives hope for the future. You have to keep in mind that this is a pretty new company. You might say they shouldn't have released it if it wasn't ready but for the most part I think that the problems can be fixed via firmware/app updates. The company clearly states what it can be used for and I found that to be true. It does what it's supposed to and it gives me the peace of mind I need while I'm away and it allows me to see who's at the door fairly quickly when the doorbell rings. I am happy with my purchases and I look forward to seeing new products come from this company.