18 hours in, and I’ve got a UDMP, two doorbells, and a g3 instant up.

Sort of out of the purview of this thread, but only one of my two doorbells will chime (mechanical chime box that has been wired to both doorbells for years. 16v/30VA transformer) and, well, the doorbell boots, records, etc. I will be swapping them in the next few days to try to isolate the problem.

I really do like the “event” feature hinted at by Korkstand.
I think the g3 instant could have some uses, but it’s not a truly fantastic camera. It’s what I would expect at the price range. You can see as well as anything within 3ft of the sensor, but I don’t think you could get a Face ID from across a large living room.
I think it would be a decent option for someone who wanted a countertop/cabinet top view of rooms and the form factor is super nice. It would be easy to use as something like a nanny spy cam or figure out which kid was sneaking cookies from the cookie jar.

For the baby monitor question- it’s got enough volume and resolution to do the job. But I can’t really see the situation where someone wants to integrate home surveillance + baby monitor. If that’s a desire, it would work for that. I don’t seem to find an option for notification on motion (it can trigger recordings, but I don’t think it can “push” that alert. Or the setting doesn’t seem to be in the app at the very least. There are a few “hidden” settings available by web browser that aren’t in the app, but I don’t have access to a compatible browser at this time.
So, a super fun, portable toy that is OK for general in-home use.

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Posted by Korkstand

Member since Nov 2003

28738 posts

Posted on 2/11/21 at 4:51 pm to Hopeful Doc

quote:
I don’t seem to find an option for notification on motion (it can trigger recordings, but I don’t think it can “push” that alert. Or the setting doesn’t seem to be in the app at the very least.

In the mobile app, go to Settings>Alerts, and in there you have options for setting notifications. You can be alerted about all motion or on a per-camera basis. You can choose to only receive notifications when you are away from home (though some users complain that geofencing is spotty). You can set a schedule for when you want to receive alerts, and combine that with whether you are home.

One feature that I'm hoping they are working on is notifications by zone. As it stands, notifications are just per-camera, so if any of your zones for a given camera trigger you'll be notified. It would be nice to have a zone that you want to record and generate events, but for which you don't want to be notified, then on the same camera have a person detection zone that you want notifications about.

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Posted by Korkstand

Member since Nov 2003

28738 posts

Posted on 2/26/21 at 6:17 pm to Hopeful Doc

quote:
Hopeful Doc

Are you on the beta channel? The Protect 1.18 beta looks promising, with improvements to the dashboard (event timeline better organized, detection area includes regular motion detections), live view should be smoother with lots of cameras, events can be filtered by date&time rather than just date, few other things.

And we aren't supposed to talk about early access stuff, but this beta includes support for the new multi-sensor that's in EA. I think it does too much in one unit, and it's priced to match ($59), but it could maybe be used in some places.

It is:
a motion sensor
a door/window sensor
an accelerometer
a temp/humidity sensor
an ambient light sensor
a smoke/co alarm sound sensor
a water sensor (requires extra sensor purchased seperately in 3pack)

All that sounds kind of amazing, but if you use it as a door/window sensor then you're kind of wasting the modect if placement isn't right. Also says it needs to be very close to smoke alarm to pick up the sound, so then it's kind of useless for other purposes.

Of course, it is an EA product and may never see general availability, but it is interesting and tells me that they're pretty committed to Protect since this is part of that same product line. Seems they're moving toward alarms and all-around security, so I'm anxious to see where they take it.

Edit: It looks just like (as in identical) the Nest Detect, just priced $10 higher.