When my next-door neighbor’s home was robbed recently, the concept of breaking and entering became very real. It was time to batten down my Kaimuki home and look around for a camera system.
My main parameters were that it had to be wireless and easy to install. I did some online homework and found a well-reviewed system from Arlo that was sold at Costco. This unit was tempting, but all the video was stored in the cloud and you had to pay the company a monthly subscription to access it.
I was looking for an option to review content locally.
I found a product called EufyCam 2, which is manufactured by Anker, which makes high-quality chargers, power banks and other peripherals.
The EufyCam 2 comes with two (Wi-Fi) enabled, battery-powered cameras. One of the big selling points is that the cameras can run on a single charge for up to a year. The set is priced at $300 on Amazon.
The cameras feature a 140-degree field of view and capture video in 1080p resolution, which is plenty high-res. They also provide night vision, two-way talk and motion detection. The cameras are engineered for outdoor use and rated “IP67,” meaning they are waterproof. The system will integrate with both Alexa and Google Assistant as well as Apple’s HomeKit, so video can be viewed on an iPad or AppleTV.
It also will store video on 16 GB of embedded memory. You can get additional storage option in the cloud through a pair of subscription options.
Installation was painless. Simply add a phone app and charge the cameras in the same manner as charging your cellphone. Just follow the directions on the app and add an ethernet cable from your router to a base station (which comes with the unit). Then, synch each camera with the base station by pushing a button.
The next step is to determine how strong the Wi-Fi signal is between the cameras and the base station. If it’s not strong enough, you may have to shuffle the location of your Wi-Fi booster, which is what I did with my Eero unit.
The time-consuming part is to figure out where to place the cameras for maximum coverage. The manufacturer recommends you mount them 7 to 10 feet high, which entailed mounting a ladder and experimenting with the camera angle.
The kit comes with mounts and requires you to drill a pair of holes into an exterior wall. Not terribly complicated. You just need a cordless drill.
The upshot?
The EufyCam 2 works really well. Motion detection was reliable, and the quality of video, which I watched on my cellphone, was excellent. It will alert you whenever the camera spots movement. A human-detection option allows the system to recognize human shapes and filter out cars, animals and other moving objects. It works most of the time, although I occasionally get alerts at night, perhaps from a stray cat. (We’ll see whether the batteries last a year.)
I consulted with my brain trust, Andrew Lanning, co-founder of Integrated Security Technologies, an Oahu company that installs high-end security systems for the Department of Defense and critical infrastructure. He’s leery of wireless systems (they can get hacked) and pointed me to https://nvd.nist.gov, a U.S. government repository that tracks product vulnerability. I did not find any reported problems with the EufyCam 2.
The cost of wired systems, installed by professionals, said Lanning, depend on variables such as camera megapixel capacity, day/night vision, length of data storage, etc. Prices can range from $25 to $40 a month plus $500 worth of gear at the low end for an easy installation and short-term cloud storage, to $40 or $50 or more per camera per month plus $2,000 for a higher-end system.
If you have the means, a wired system is the best bet, but if you’re a DIY practitioner, the EufyCam2 is a great option.
Rob Kay, a Honolulu-based writer, covers technology and sustainability for Tech View and is the creator of fijiguide.com. He can be reached at Robertfredkay@gmail.com.
