Wireless Security Cameras

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cameras

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How many cameras is he wanting? I ask because once you get past a handful they can really start to gum up the wifi works, and that's if the video stays local. If the video has to hit the internet before coming back in (I'm not sure if Arlo has a local streaming option) that can plug up a lot of people's upstream bandwidth and also chew up their data cap (if there is one).

If they must be wireless, I think there are some brands/models that connect directly to a local recorder on a dedicated channel/network (again not sure if Arlo has this). But I will always recommend wired cameras if at all possible.

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and I can get it to do everything but show on the TV, but i dont own a Google based TV...

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Can't you stream Arlo cameras to any tv via a Chromecast?

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How many cameras is he wanting? I ask because once you get past a handful they can really start to gum up the wifi works, and that's if the video stays local.

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Are you sure about that? I have a minimum of 9 outdoor 3K EZVIZ WiFi cameras running 24x7 recording in to microSD cards in the cameras. When we go on vacation I temporarily setup about 10 more inside our rather large house, garage and other areas. When I pull up all of these cameras simultaneously in the app, all of the live camera views usually work flawlessly except in the rare event our T-Mobile router or our mesh network is having issues.

I think you're right about the camera app reducing the quality of the video stream when I view multiple camera live feeds simultaneously. But the quality is still good (maybe standard definition). I can click on any particular camera and it loads it's view in the default definition quality I have it set at. I can quickly revert back to mult view.

Here's what I was just testing....

I just checked. Right now I'm running a 10th temporary outdoor camera monitoring a hole in the ground (likely a groundhog or possibly an armadillo). When I pull up the normal view that I watch of all 10 cameras, all 10 camera feeds are stacked vertically in my phone and I only see the top 3 cameras in the list, plus part of the 4th camera. All 4 of those cameras are streaming live camera feeds. As I scroll down, whatever 4 cameras are in full or partial view are streaming. As another camera feed comes into view it immediately streams. So even though I have 10 cameras in multi view only 4 are streaming to my phone at a time, although I can quickly view any 4 at a time by scrolling down.

I can also update the multi view to watch 6 smaller streams of the cameras, or all 10 at a time in very small thumbnails that are streaming.

It works pretty well. I believe the EZVIZ app is progressively reducing the definition of the cameras to lower quality when I stream 4 cameras to 6 cameras to all 10 cameras in the smaller thumbnails. In any event it works really well for me.

My 10 or more cameras are definitely not gumming up my WiFi, so its okay (at least with EZVIZ cameras) to install quite a few WiFi cameras recording 24x7 to their local micro SD cards simultaneously. The app handles viewing them all seamlessly even by lowering resolution as needed. Pretty impressive.

Yeah it's pretty standard for cameras to output 2/3 streams (hi/low or hi/mid/low) and the viewer app chooses what it wants to see. In the case of a camera recording to its own SD card, it's typically not using wifi hardly at all until you start streaming. Then and only then will it start consuming airwaves and your ISP upstream bandwidth.

It would be a huge waste to send 3k video when all you want is a tiny thumbnail view that is only a few hundred pixels wide. Waste of bandwidth and a waste of client cpu resizing it. So this happens on the camera to save both.

Anyway, I'm just going to stand by my statement that most people are going to have problems with 5-10 wifi cameras if they are all streaming full-res video 24/7. If recording to an NVR on your local network, or streaming mid- to hi-res for extended periods to a TV or whatever, you're going to have issues. Most of the cloud cameras don't record full time (or if they do, they save low-res video when nothing is happening), and if they have cloud-based detection they send the low-res video for analysis and only save high-res upon detection.

The biggest thing is almost all wifi cameras are 2.4ghz, but they almost have to be if you want them to work outdoors. So even though that wifi band is capable of speeds far faster than 10 X 1mbps or whatever, in real world use that plugs things up much more than you'd think. They're all competing for airtime, you'll get a lot of wifi retries (transparent to the user but the effect is slow and laggy service for all devices), dropped connections, dropped video frames, etc.

But again, it probably won't be a problem with your particular cameras if the typical use is either 1 high-res or 10 low-res streams at once. According to AI re: Arlo, the "essential" models connect to wifi and it would be a bad idea to try to live stream more than 5 or so. The Arlo pro/ultra line connects to a hub via proprietary protocol though, so those wouldn't load up the wifi.

My 10 outdoor EZVIZ WiFi cameras are recording 24x7 in High Definition or higher to microSD cards. When I view a single camera video stream live or by recorded playback the video is whatever definition quality I chose for that particular camera.

Only when I watch the cameras in multview, depending on the size of the video window I choose, EZVIZ streams a lower quality as you predicted.

When you say most people will have issues, I agree with you that they definitely would if they were trying to stream 5 or more cameras simultaneously in full rez video (such as 24x7 to cloud recording).

But for people like me who have as many as 20 WiFi cameras all recording 24x7 to their own microSD card, and then their phone app allows them to view several or more cameras simultaneously in Multi view, the camera live feeds are in low resolution and do not cause any issues at least for EZVIZ and probably several other manufacturers that have apps and cameras to properly manage multiple camera live feeds streaming simultaneously in low resolution.

Either I am lucky or EZVIZ just has an app that doesn't allow issues when viewing a lot of camera live feeds simultaneously in low resolution. It sounds like the Arlo Essential cameras have an inferior MultiView Live Stream functionality.

Even when I view all my 10 current cameras in MultiView, there is physical space on my phone to view 14 small thumbnail Live Feeds simultaneously and scroll down to my 20 total cameras when I have all of the cameras set up. I can add up to 1000 cameras in the app.

So in practicality, I can install as many EZVIZ WiFi cameras as I want on my property recording 24x 7 to micro SD and the app will seamlessly manage them and I can view between 3 to 14 camera live feeds at a time in mult view with no problem at all.

Some of my cameras are 5 years old. I've had to replace two cameras within the last year. They are PTZ and the motors failed on my two most high traffic cameras.

Concerning the microSD cards I initially used a "regular" microSD card in my first two cameras. One of them went bad due to either being too hot or too cold. I don't remember which. However, all of my cameras now use Samsung PRO Endurance 128GB microSD cards. Those are some really nice microSD cards for outdoor security cameras. I haven't had any issues with them yet.

I do review my event log daily and also view my cameras frequently to see what critters are setting my cameras off. We live in a rural area on acerage and on a lake so I like to see what's going on with the wildlife. I have two WiFi cameras about 80' or so from the house. Both are solar powered WiFi cameras. One is watching over our boat and the other is looking out at the lake.

I'll know pretty soon if I have any cameras break or microSD cards go bad. So no need to keep records. I have a couple of spare cameras and several spare microSD cards, so I am prepared if I need to replace anything.

I've added more new cameras with new microSD cards over the last 5 years, so they are all between 1 to 5 years old.

I also have some Wyze cameras, some Reolink PTZ, and Arlo cameras that are between 5 to 10 years old. I still use 1 Reolink and 2 Wyze cams and they still work fine and are all WiFi. They all have the Samsung PRO Endurance microSD cards. I have quite a few spare old cameras. I replaced most of them with the EZVIZ cameras which I prefer.

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I had Arlo for a few months, it burned through batteries like a mofo. Replaced with Wyze cams.

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Are you able to view them on a google TV ?