Thinking about replacing Indoor NestCam. Eyeing the IPC-K35S and have a few questions...

[legend1011]

My post may be more related to Blue Iris, but it is tied to this specific camera model (IPC-K35S)...

I've been using an indoor Nest Cam (my only camera at my house) in our main living room for the past couple years. I have never paid for the Nest Aware subscription because I hate subscription models (I'm sure many on this forum can agree with that). Since I'm only using the free service for Nest, it's been quite limited, but I've still been able to get the following services for free:
1) Single App to use with my other Nest products (Nest Thermostat and Nest Carbon Monoxide/Smoke Detector)
2) Alerts (picture snapshot) to my Nest app on my iPhone and Apple Watch for MOTION and/or SOUND
3) Ability to watch Live Video and turn the camera on/off from my phone
4) Geofencing - our indoor camera should automatically turn on when we leave the house and turn off when we're home. Sometimes this hasn't always worked (very frustrating) and requires us to manually toggle on/off the camera
5) Can see snapshots (no video) from 3 hours back... This is pretty worthless and has always felt like a tease to subscribe to their premium service.

We mainly use this camera as a Dog Cam while we are at work. I'm hoping to sell the Nest Cam and start a Blue Iris based system that I can add outdoor cameras to overtime. For me, it might make sense to start with a WiFi-based living room camera (IPC-K35S). There is some excitement to starting this project, but I'm hopeful the way we have been using the NestCam will help us transition to other camera.

QUESTIONS:
If I were to purchase Blue Iris and the IPC-K35S, would I be able to completely replace my Nest Cam with the above features I've been accustomed to?
Does the IPC-K35S have a status LED like the Nest Cam? Can we actively see if its recording or not?
Does Blue Iris have any "geofencing" type options for automatically turning off my indoor cameras?
How well does the Blue Iris app work on the iPhone/Apple Watch?

On a sidenote: I've really been back and forth about making some changes to our camera system and this forum has been very valuable to me. I have been skeptical of buying cameras from China, but I think I'm finally coming around based on comments in another thread, I digress... I can get paranoid at times. Thanks for the help!

 

[aristobrat]

As long as you buy through a reputable dealer like Andy (@EMPIRETECANDY), I don’t think you should have many worries about using a Chinese camera. I’d suggest that when you’re interested in a specific model that you look for a owner review thread on the forum here and read through it, it’ll usually have a lot of good info. If there isn’t a review thread here (or at least a few posts talking about the model), then I’d be a little wary.

Dahua’s consumer models (like the A and K series) seem to be decent cameras but their setup process is usually completely different than their profession models. For the pro models, there is almost always a web server built into them that you use to configure the camera. You can do everything through the web interface but there are also other tools (apps) that you can run on a PC/smartphone that will let you configure some of the camera as well. IMO, the web interface is what most people use because it’s easy and you can configure everything there . The consumer models (like the one you’re looking at) don’t usually have a web interface. Out of the box you use a Dahua smartphone app to initialize the camera and get it on your WiFi network and get the basics setup. If you need to do more advanced configuration (like giving the camera a static IP address), you’ll have to use a different Dahua app on your PC/smartphone. IMO it’s really not too hard, it’s just a few extra hoops during setup.

I personally really like the Blue Iris iOS and Apple Watch functionality, but my only comparison is Dahua and Synology’s NVR apps, so the bar wasn’t set particularly high. I do 95% of my BI interaction from my iPhone (live video/clips), 4% from it’s awesome built-in web server (live video/clips when I check in from my work computer), and 1% on the BI computer itself when making a big config change.

Blue Iris does have geo-fencing options, but I have not played with them.

I haven’t seen a camera that wasn’t tightly integrated with a closed system (like Nest) that shows when it’s being recorded or not. You can enable/disable a camera easily from BI and the iOS app.

BI will show you snapshots going back as far as you have disk space for recordings.

I’m pretty sure Blue Iris can start recording when it hears audio, but I haven’t tried that myself.