Anyone had good luck with any of the cheapo home security cameras out there? I am referring to: Wyze, Arlo, Eufy, Ring etc.
Seems they all have some bad reviews but wondering if any are at least decent.
Any specific battery operated ones that you like?
I prefer Reolink security cameras because theyâre relatively inexpensive, theyâre fairly high quality, and some of them work with Blue Iris, which is an excellent security camera program.
I have two Reolink cameras, but theyâre not battery powered.
Good luck in your search. 
You tend to get what you pay for.
Iâve got Hikvision cameras and an NVR, if I was doing it again Iâd be buying Dahua. Better value for the price and they seem to be responsive to firmware issues. Hikvision are hopeless in that area.
I bought a couple of Eufyâs 9 months ago, and I liked them until this March. All of a sudden they both reported a 35-40% battery drop per day, whereas before they could go a month without charging (theyâre solar cameras but donât get much light). Their support is very good though, and sent me 2 replacement cameras after I reported the issues I had.
Unfortunately both replacements also dropped the same 35-40% each day from the get-go after I installed them 
ButâŚtoday one of them acted ânormalâ and didnât report any battery drop in the last 24 hours (it gets a few hours of indirect sun each day). I guess it healed itself 
I think itâs a firmware battery reporting issue since to me itâs unlikely that the 2 original cameras went bad the exact same day. Plus of course 1 of the replacements suddenly fixing itself.
Iâm going to let the other camera totally discharge per the battery monitor and see if it still works
TL;DRâŚIâm not all that happy with the Eufyâs that I have but their support when I contacted them was great .
I keep eyeballing the Arlo outdoor cams at my local Wallyworld - Iâve been using a Google Nest Doorbell for a couple of years but Iâd like to expand the coverage around my house and be able to work within the Nest ecosystem.
But⌠I havenât yet looked far enough into them to see how reputable they are - they are just priced where Iâm comfortable.
Itâs unfortunate the Eufyâs may have some QC problems - I generally like Anker & Anker-adjacent stuff pretty well.
Iâm also interested in these. But with cheap (and even some expensive) internet-connected devices I tend to be concerned about the manufacturer just âthrowing it over the fenceâ and then failing to release firmware patches for security vulnerabilities. I donât know anything about the particular brands mentioned in this thread, but I have heard of some massive botnets that were made possible largely by IoT devices with unpatched (and unpatcheable) security vulnerabilities. Or the manufacturer may support them for a while and then pull the rug out from under their customers by deprecating the devices, effectively rendering the devices and even their related installation accessories useless.
As others have said, you get what you pay for. I went down this rabbit hole a year or so ago. There is a dedicated forum but you will see particular issues with it/the owner on Reddit.
My general learnings:
Think about what you want to achieve with the system before spending a tonne of money.
Hard wired cameras are king. WiFi cams can drop out or become pixilated when there is movement in the scene because (as far as I am aware) none of them buffer the video to the internal SD card.
Sensor size is important than MP. In poor lighting, a 4MP sensor will produce a better image than 8MP.
Always look at the video quality recording movement, most of these cams will take great still images when the scene is stationary. It is motion what you want to record.
Whatever you get, isolate it from the internet to stop it phoning home and or being hacked. Use a VPN to access, never port forward.
Donât overestimate the abilities of the camera. Most âbetterâ cameras will have a DORI rating (detect, observe, recognise, identify). Like ANSI throw rating for flashlights, this is for ideal conditions and should be treated as a metric for comparing products rather than gospel. As field of view increases, the distance you can identify a person rapidly decreases. Varifocal cameras are popular reccomendations to start with so you can âdial inâ the correct field of view for each location.
Do look for the minimum focal distance, to check the camera is suitable for your purpose.
For identification, donât place the camera too high, else youâll just record the tops of peopleâs heads; treat your security cameras like âcamera trapsâ- you want to position it on a âgame trailâ and at a good angle. Overview cameras can obviously be higher, but you wonât get enough pixels of someoneâs face once you zoom in, to allow you to identify them.
A popular reccomendation is a chap called Andy who runs the website EmpireTech. He sells mostly rebranded Dahua cameras.
There is software to help you design placement and focal length of a camera system but these cost money so I just did a scale âfloorplanâ of my house, then drew on the horizontal field of view and used a compass to draw the âIdentityâ distance of the cameras. Do stand in the proposed location and think about what you want to see from that point, I need to move one of my cameras, I initially thought it would be good to watch the driveway, but Iâve now realised there is a blind spot behind the car when itâs parked, moving it across 1.5m will solve this problem and also better cover the access towards the front door.
Not going to get into what recorder or software, as Iâm still figuring out my final setup.
And whatever you do, stay away from Blink cameras. SLOOOOOOW connect time. And for that matter, just stay away from wireless in general, someone with a drone could put a directional wifi jammer on it and hover it over your house or particular camera. Based on this alone, contextually it SHOULD BE MADE legal to take down drones regardless of what affiliation they may have, particularly if theyâre within 100â of any direction of a residential area or educational facility. But thatâs another issue for another day.
Also, avoid any cameras that require an app, email address, registration, an innernet connection, etc. Those that require connection to their servers then feed you back either live data or storage, might be free at first, but then the mfr decides to require a monthly payment, or even just takes down their servers because you had yours long enough and they only support their new stuff.
Best is strictly hardwired, on your own computer, with local storage. No, you likely wonât be able to get âalertsâ and see whoâs on your propertah when youâre away, but you also wonât end up with a pile of 8MP bricks if the mfr dumps their old line in favor of their new monthly-payment lines.
Itâs a good idea to think ahead of how youâre going to save the video, if thatâs what you want to do.
I prefer cameras that work with Blue Iris (and save to my hard drive), but thereâs more than one way to skin a cat. 
Good shout, Iâm not in a position to provide advice as Iâm still working off SD cards. I had hoped to set up blue iris on a virtual machine in Proxmox but itâs ⌠Challenging⌠to get the intel graphics passed through.
Only have 2 cameras running at the moment with 2 more to install so I need a solution sooner rather than later. I did briefly try Frigate, but struggled to even get a camera stream. Will give Scrypted a chance then might admit defeat and wipe the machine Iâve got running Proxmox and install windows to run BI.
Are you running Linux?
I donât use Linux, but hereâs some software that might helpâŚ
https://alternativeto.net/software/blue-iris/?platform=linux