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Smarthome camera surprising downsides

broadbentr
Organizer

I currently have a 30 day trial of a Telus Smarthome ADC-V723 camera. After a couple of days, my initial impression is that it seems like good hardware and has good image quality. However there’s a couple of major downsides that I’ve been surprised to discover.


The first is that not all settings are available in the Smarthome phone app, such as the ability to flip the image which I had to do this in order to ceiling mount the camera. Additional settings are available using a web browser on a computer, however the web app requires Flash! Yes Flash, in all it’s outdated and insecure glory! There’s some irony that a security company would use one of the most insecure technologies on the web. They must be one of the last still using it.


Second downside is the inability of the camera to record continuous video while there is motion in the scene. Depending on the rule that is triggered, the camera can only record either 20-30s of video, or 40-60 seconds and then will stop recording for a minimum of 30s before it can be triggered again. This seems to be a significant limitation for a security camera. The tech I spoke to could not provide any reason for this other than “that’s just the way its designed.”


So overall I’m not sure I will keep the Telus Smarthome camera. I suspect the dev’s are working away on an update before December when Flash gets permanently blocked from Chrome (Safari already has done this), but I’m surprised they have let it lag behind for so long which doesn’t bode well for the quality of the software from the company. However the inability to properly record is a major shortcoming that probably will be a deal breaker for me.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Fisherguy
Ambassador

I was just looking to see if the cameras were any good, sounds like the answer would be NO.
For $280 you'd think they'd offer something better...

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Fisherguy
Ambassador

I was just looking to see if the cameras were any good, sounds like the answer would be NO.
For $280 you'd think they'd offer something better...