wifi camera to place above my appartement front door

[Mito]

Hi all,

I have for while been looking for a wifi camera to place above my appartement front door.

I have power supply there and a strong wifi signal and I want to connect it to my home network and my current Synology Surveillance Station NAS.

But what should I chose since I guess I need a wide angle and something able to focus on a very short distance.

Thanks in advance,
Soren

 

[bp2008]

I honestly could not recommend a specific outdoor wifi camera because I don't use any. Amcrest is generally a decent brand. Avoid Reolink. Just make sure whatever you buy, it has RTSP support so your NAS will be able to stream from it.

If your power outlet is sheltered enough for you to use a powerline network adapter, you should do that so you can use any wired camera and that improves the quality and stability of the video and lets you use any of the popular cameras often recommended here. To find powerline network adapters, search your favorite tech store like amazon for "g.hn wave 2". I think that is the newest standard.

Do you have doorbell wiring? If so, consider a doorbell camera because it is lower down and that makes for better face capture. Doorbell cameras all have wide-angle lenses and focus great on subjects that are extremely near.

 

[Mito]

Thanks bp2008

No need for it to be outdoor equipment because it is a indoor apartment front door.

I have a relatively good wifi download speed of 151Mbps down and 52 Mbps up outside my front door so if I could like to avoid Powerline adaptors.

I did look at a Enfy doorbell solution since it would work with a unit on both my front and back door and have no requirement for cloud storage, but I would still prefer something I could tie into my Synology Surveillance Station NAS.

Thanks
Soren

 

[bp2008]

Well lots of doorbells have RTSP support, so you could get it to stream to Synology. Just make sure RTSP is mentioned in the specs or the title. I'd recommend avoiding the Ezviz DB1C. It is the one I got and it has problems:

• button does not always ring my indoor chime
• camera is difficult to configure (no web interface; I had to use the Ezviz mobile app and Hikvision's batch configuration tool for actually modifying the streaming settings)
• it reboots every few minutes if it does not have internet access. So although I don't use its cloud features, I can't prevent it from "phoning home".
• the video feed drops out about 100 times a day (I'm not exaggerating), often in bursts so it might be stable for a few hours, and then offline 3/4 of the time for the next hour. It is probably just my local network conditions at fault, but it happens on both 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies.

 

[wittaj]

The speed of your internet is immaterial...

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether the camera is wifi or hardwired) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

You would have much more success with a powering adapter...

It is why most of us avoid wifi and why we see like above a wifi doorbell is always dropping.