There are certain technology topics I get asked about regularly.
I get the most questions about cord-cutting, but the next most popular subject is surveillance cameras.
It seems everyone is looking for an inexpensive and easy camera system to install in and around their homes for protection.
People ask what cameras I use at home, and the answer is Wyze cameras, but I’ll write about those another time.
In asking some follow-up questions about their camera needs and available resources, I can usually narrow down their good choices to one or two brands and models of video camera.
One of the questions I ask is, where would they like to mount a camera (inside or outside) and if there is electricity close to the installation location.
Given a choice, I pick powered cameras, which are easy to set up and will run forever and record continuously.
If they tell me they don’t have a convenient power plug, the recommendations change to battery-powered cameras, which are becoming more popular.
I’ve previously reviewed battery-powered camera systems from Blink and Netgear, and now I can add Foscam to the brands I’ve tried and can recommend.
The Foscam E1 Wire-Free Home Security Camera System ($199.99, www.amazon.com) reminds me of the Netgear Arlo Pro 2 I reviewed earlier this year.
The E1 system ships with one wireless camera and a base station. Additional cameras (called B1s) are available for $129.99, and each base station can control four cameras.
A similar two-camera system, the Netgear Arlo Pro 2, costs $439.99 from Amazon, which is about $110 more than the Foscam E1 system.
Specs
So the Foscam E1 is cheaper than the Arlo Pro 2. That’s great, but how does it stack up?
The E1 can record in 720p or 1080p HD. It is designed to record a 10-second video clip when the camera’s motion sensors detect movement.
You can also start a manual recording through the smartphone app. There is a web interface to view the cameras or clips, but I could not get it to run on my Macintosh computer.
The E1’s base station uses 802.11 b/b/n Wi-Fi or it can connect directly to your home network via ethernet.
The video clips are uploaded to the Foscam cloud server.
Clips are stored for up to seven days with a 1-gigabyte limit. If you hit the 1-gigabyte limit, it’ll erase the oldest clips to make more room. Likewise, after the seventh day, videos are deleted to make room for more. The cloud storage is free.
If you’d like more permanent storage, you can add your own flash drive or hard drive to the base station’s USB port for local storage of the video clips.
If you are using a USB storage option, clips are saved to the cloud and the USB device simultaneously.
Speaking of clips, the length of the clips is 10 seconds, and I didn’t see a way to change the duration. Manual recordings can be longer.
Clips can be downloaded from the cloud for permanent storage.
The camera is weather-resistant, so it is suitable for outdoor placement. The included wall mount is a small metal dome you can attach to any surface with a screw or nail. The camera has a magnet in the case that snaps onto the dome for easy pointing in many directions.
You can also place the camera on a shelf or the magnet will stick to any metal surface.
The E1’s battery has a capacity of 5,000 milliamp hours and it recharges with a microUSB cable. Foscam says the battery should last for several months of normal use. The app warns you after about 20 seconds of live viewing that it will cause the battery to drain faster.
The app will also give you notice of when it is time to recharge.
The camera has night vision up to 25 feet from the camera. The nighttime images were very clear.
The motion sensor is adjustable, but the E1’s camera is not designed for high-traffic areas.
I mounted the camera on my front door frame, which is pointed toward the street.
The wide-angle lens covered 110 degrees of view and cars on my fairly busy street, which caused the camera to capture a motion clip several times per minute, all day long. I had to turn off notifications rather quickly to stop the constant interruption.
This is not the type of camera you want facing a busy street. There is no way to draw a box to define where you want to look for motion. This camera is better suited to look at areas that don’t get a lot of traffic or movement.
Foscam says the camera can detect two types of movement, human and regular activity. I had mine set for human detection, and it still notified me very frequently that motion was detected when no humans were in sight, even when I had the camera’s motion sensor set to low sensitivity.
You might think recording too much is not a bad thing, but it will drain the battery fairly quickly.
The camera has a microphone and a speaker. You can use the app for two-way communication.
Setup
The camera’s speaker is also used to talk you through the base station and camera setup.
I connected the base station to my home network via ethernet cable. When I installed the camera’s battery, it started telling me it was trying to connect. The base and camera come already paired from the factory, so they found each other fairly quickly. I downloaded the free Foscam app (available for iOS or Android), and the app asked me to use the phone’s camera to read a QR code on the back of the base station, which completes the setup. It was all done in about three minutes.
The base station can also connect to your home network wirelessly.
