Inexpensive IP camera for indoor room monitoring?

I

ipmania

Getting the hang of it
Apr 10, 2022
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Canada
It'll be kind of a baby monitor situation. I'd like to know that an aging parent is ok. She's fully fine right now but is beginning to need a cane. I am thinking of sprinkling a few cameras around the house--including inside the house in places like her kitchen, sitting room, etc.

For the outdoor door cameras, I know from reading the forum that I should get good ones.

But for indoors, I'm thinking I can get away with some inexpensive ones.

I see that tons of inexpensive 1080p analog cameras are available. Are there equivalents for IP cameras? I don't need waterproof nor vandal-proof. I don't need high res. I don't even need low light. Nor PoE.

I don't have an NVR yet. I'm considering either some kind of name brand NVR or a PC running Blue Iris. I hope I'm not putting the cart before the horse.

Between her house and mine, I believe I can get 100mbp Internet (both from the same provider) with unlimited data cap and so I'm thinking I can establish a VPN between our 2 houses and be able to see what's going on. I hope the internet bandwidth is good enough. I won't mind a few dropped frames here or there or even very often as the purpose is to see if she's ok. I'm not even sure how to do that. I envision a low-end PC or Raspberry Pi at my end getting the data from her house and displaying it on a monitor. But that's a topic for a different thread.

Any pointers appreciated.
 
This one is a little old but a good camera for the price and has pan/tilt to boot -

2MP Amcrest PT


I also have a Dahua IPC-K42A which is a 4MP camera and has an even better quality video but is more expensive. Both the Amcrest and Dahua also have audio (microphone) which may be important in your case as well.

Depending on how you set things up at the remote end a 100Mb connection should be more than enough. As long as there's no data caps involved and if you use Blue Iris or an NVR the composite stream won't even tickle a 100Mb/ps connection.
 
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That Amcrest is indeed inexpensive. So thanks. Though I don't need PT or wifi. In fact, I'm not normally a fan of wifi cameras as I have doubts about their (communications) reliability, though I have said above that I don't mind dropped frames and such. It's just that I've had bad memories from the early days of wifi.

Thanks also re: the note about audio. I hadn't thought about that aspect. I'm not quite sure how'd I'd use it though.
 
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I have a couple of them as well.
They're handy to set up.
more responsive than a Blink camera. ( the real time lag is so annoying) Unless of course you pay for the Subscription, then magically all the annoyances seem to disappear! Magine that!
 
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it has ethernet and wifi. you can use either. It runs off USB power. pretty slick for the money. These two rooms are pitch black.
Boiler room and mechanic shop. So the IR is pretty good.

Screenshot 2022-04-20 211308.pngScreenshot 2022-04-20 211233.png
 
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The one I have, Amcrest, is hard wired and can be made PoE with a 5 volt PoE splitter.
 
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It's 98 Degrees year round in the Boiler room. it's takina lickin and kept on Tickin.
and 80-82 degrees in the other room and That one has been running for 2 years.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Depending on how you set things up at the remote end a 100Mb connection should be more than enough. As long as there's no data caps involved and if you use Blue Iris or an NVR the composite stream won't even tickle a 100Mb/ps connection.
Click to expand...

I feel it's too early in the process to ask this (as I should really do some research first), but in your scenario of an NVR and a composite stream, what is actually being sent? In my beginner levels of thinking, I was hoping I'd have the cameras send a photo every 30 seconds or so and I'd (somehow? not sure how) capture them and then view them with a device on my side (hoping to leverage a small form factor PC or maybe a Raspberry Pi).
 
With an NVR or Blue Iris, when BI is properly configured especially, the composite video of all cameras is sent as a lower resolution stream, not the sum total of all the cameras. This is especially true when sub streams are used. When you select a single camera for a full screen, the video stream switches to the main stream, full resolution and bit rate, but it's just one camera so there's no problem with bandwidth.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
With an NVR or Blue Iris, when BI is properly configured especially, the composite video of all cameras is sent as a lower resolution stream, not the sum total of all the cameras. This is especially true when sub streams are used. When you select a single camera for a full screen, the video stream switches to the main stream, full resolution and bit rate, but it's just one camera so there's no problem with bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Sounds good! What could I use on my side to view this composite video? If it was Blue Iris, I guess I could use remote access across the VPN. But what if I chose an NVR instead? Would it be an app on a phone or tablet? Ideally, I'd be looking at the video stream on a large-ish monitor on my end (27-inch, 30, even 32-inch).
 
 
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Amcrest has an App, actually a couple. Amcrest View Pro, and Amcrest Smarthome.
I think you can use View Pro. there is a QR code in the NVR directing you to the App.
 
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Hell i think you can use the App without an NVR and save to an SD card.
 
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