FOSCAM 3K 5MP Outdoor Camera Wireless, 5GHz&2.4GHz WiFi Camera for Home Security, 120° FoV Outside Surveillance Camera, AI Human/Vehicle Detection, 66FT Color Night Vision, 120dB Siren, IP66

I'm going to say this is really a 4.5 star camera, but because I got it on sale and so far it's been mostly meeting my expectations I'm giving it 5 stars. Here's what I like about it. - Image quality during the day is outstanding. - Has a very large field of view. - Image quality at night using IR is very acceptable and slightly better when the spotlights are triggered during motion detection. - Motion detection is quite good. In fact it's light years ahead of the previous camera I had. The last camera would trigger an alert if a mosquito flew in front of it. This Foscam seems to be doing very good at detecting humans and vehicles. If you want more detection schemes (package, face, etc.) then you need to sign up for their cloud package. I don't need anything but human and vehicle detection and I'm happy as of now without the cloud package. - You can define areas where motion detection will take place and ignore areas where you don't want motion detection. For me I just use the entire field of view because I'm out in the country and don't need to define a specific area. - The Foscam app for iOS is rated very low on the app store. But my experience so far with the app does not warrant a low rating. I've had no issues with it, although there are some improvements I would like to see. I'll detail those below. - The camera was easy to install and easy to connect to my wireless network on 5G. - All the hardware you need for installation is included. - It supports RTSP streaming and is ONVIF compatible. - The sound to and from the microphone and speaker is pretty good for the device. - You can enable a siren when an alert is triggered, although I'll never use it because I don't need to scare the Amazon driver every time they bring a package. But someone may find a use for it if they don't expect there will ever be a person in the area and they want to try and scare someone away if they do show up. - The spotlights can also be enabled such that when motion is detected they will turn on at night to help light the scene. A couple recommendations for Foscam as improvements. - I've had a couple false detections for a human when there was no human in the field of view. If you can improve the detection algorithms this camera would be even better. But as I said above the detection on this camera is light years ahead of my previous camera. - I would like the Foscam app to be able to allow me to set a notification sound on my iPhone that is different from my other generic notification sounds. I think this can be done by the developer in the app. - Sometimes it takes too long to get an alert notification. I believe this setting can only go as low as one minute, meaning the camera will only send a notification every minute. So if the detect timer is at zero and it detects motion it won't send an alert until that timer reaches 1 minute. If it just so happens that the motion was detected and the timer was at 59 seconds then you get the alert very quickly. I would like the alert immediately no matter what. When motion is detected send an alert immediately. When motion is no longer detected then reset the detect algorithm. I don't care if I get a lot of alerts. But it would be nice to be able to set these values more granular than they allow. All and all this is a great camera for my use case and the price was excellent. The fact that I still get human and vehicle detection without having to use a cloud service is very nice. I'd recommend buying this if you're looking for a security camera that is in a fixed position.

I was skeptical that this 5MP camera would be very good, but I was wrong! This is good for basic users and advanced users as well. I'll explain, so this may be a long review. I prefer hardwired (non-wifi) cameras for many reasons. They don't slow down my wifi, more reliable, and better image due to more bandwidth. However, the most difficult part of setup is getting an ethernet cable to your location. If you have a POE switch or injector, you only need that one cable. Adding a POE injector is easy but would increase your cost a tad. The camera does have a DC input connection, but the camera doesn't come with a power supply. POE is so much easier anyway. Please look up POE or POE injectors if you are not familiar with the terms. I have a POE switch and ran the cable under the siding. The RJ45 connection to the camera is typical, and a bit bulky to hide under the siding but my install turned out just fine. I do like that the camera connector has connection and activity LED's on it so you can see if the camera has power/connectivity. Now that it's installed, setup was easy with the app. For basic users the app is great and gives some nice options. The camera is very usable without paying for the Foscam cloud service. It has some basic motion and/or sound detection, and after setting up email settings in it's setup, it will email you alerts. I use Gmail, and set it up using SMTP settings with an app password. Google "gmail app password" and gmail SMTP setup if you need help. If you pay for the Foscam Cloud Service (there is usually a 30 day free trial), you'll have many more options for intelligent detection (packages, vehicles, animals, people, etc). I personally don't need the cloud services as I'm running a PC with Blue Iris software that does all the features I want. Blue Iris involves a bunch more set up though. What I like about this camera is that I can have both Blue Iris running and if that fails, I can enable the built in features of the camera and still get alerts via emails directly from the camera. I don't typically use the Foscam app because it accesses the camera through their servers. I prefer a direct control (I actually have another app that can access it directly, but that again is a whole different way of doing things requires more advanced setup). I do find myself using the Foscam app more often because it is actually very easy and quicker than going through my Blue Iris app and you can access many Foscam cameras from their app (even those at different locations). Foscam does provide PC and Mac software (Foscam VMS) as well, but I found for my more advanced setup (i.e. Blue Iris) I needed the phone app to setup all the advanced settings properly. My one dislike is that this camera does not have a built in web-server so that you can set it up using a direct IP address connection to it with a web browser. At first this slowed down my setup, but once I realized the app worked best for setup, I was up and running in my advanced configuration. And it's been working great. One more thing, firmware updates are very easy as well. This is important to me as Foscam has been around for a while and provide updates now and again for their products. The app actually has an indicator on it too when a firmware update is available. Other features... I've never had good luck with my other cameras using two-way audio, but these Foscam cameras work pretty well, especially with a hardwired connection. This camera also has a built in alarm sound that can be enabled manually or set to go off during motion/sound detection. Another interesting feature is that even though the camera works in complete darkness with it's IR LED's, you can turn on a "floodlight" to turn on a white LED to illuminate the area a bit. I wouldn't call it a "floodlight," but it's bright enough to illuminate my deck if I needed a light on back there. Final thoughts.... I miss the direct web server set up on this camera, but that's the worst of it. It's a great high definition camera with some pretty awesome features. I very impressed with the quality and ease of use, both for basic cloud use or advanced user setup!

The V5EP is an excellent POE security camera. If you don’t have an electrical outlet near the camera, it can be powered from a POE switch, or POE Ethernet power injector. It also has a port to connect a 12-volt DC power supply at the camera if you want to power it locally. Video resolution is excellent both day and night. The nighttime color video is very good with just the neighborhood ambient light, or you can use the onboard led white light for color images under any night light conditions. The camera has all the standard features you find on any Foscam camera as well as onboard “Smart AI”. The onboard “Smart AI” works with or without the Foscam cloud service and can accurately detect and identify humans and vehicles up to 60’ away from the camera. False alarms are almost non-existent. You can add the cloud service and also get additional detection alerts for pets and parcels. If you need to detect movement more than sixty feet from the camera you can turn off the human and vehicle detection and use the standard motion detection to detect vehicle motion up to 150’ feet or more away from the camera, but you will get more false alarms from windblown trees, as well as any animals or people walking closer to the camera. If this is a problem, you can use the “detection area” filter to mask out any movement in areas you are not concerned about. Overall, I am very happy with the camera. The video quality is great. It was easy to install and configure. And technical support has been great also.