Hey folks, welcome back to Grand Adventure. I'm your host Marc Guido. Now,
while we were planning on boondocking down near the Mexican border on Boca
Chica Beach in Texas, because of our proximity to the border we wanted to
have some sort of security camera on the rig. Now for personal safety reasons we
explained a couple of episodes ago, why we did not camp on Boca Chica Beach, but
we set up the camera nevertheless and we wanted to share with you our solution
for this issue on this episode. So stay tuned!
Now, for our security camera on the RV we had four prerequisites. One is it had to
be battery-powered. Two, it had to transmit wirelessly because we wanted a
wireless installation. Therefore the camera had to use Wi-Fi.
And we also wanted one that had no monthly subscription fee for service. Now
what we ended up with is this model from Hiseeu. Now I want to explain, we have
no relationship with this company. We bought it on Amazon just like everybody
else, but this one does get four and a half out of five stars in its review
rating on Amazon and we can understand why. Now let's talk about some of the key
features that we haven't already described on this Hiseeu camera. It
uses full 1080p HD resolution and has a 130-degree field of view. It uses
infrared LEDs to gain night vision up to a limited distance from the camera. It
also has two-way audio so you can hear what the camera hears ,and you can also
speak through the camera remotely. Now, the batteries in this camera are
actually rechargeable, so all you have to do is plug it in and, depending on the
amount of motion that the camera detects and prompts it to start recording, it can
go from a few weeks to a few months between needing recharges. Now, to
minimize false alerts the motion detection comes with heat sensing. So
what it does is, it records when it detects motion from an object that's at
least 67 degrees Fahrenheit, so it basically is using body heat detection
as well as motion detection to prompt it to start recording. And that is
adjustable, the sensitivity is adjustable between high, medium and low, so you can
find that sweet spot where you're not recording all kinds of things that, you
know, blowing leaves or what have you. Now, recordings are stored in an
encrypted form right on a 32 gigabyte microSD card that's actually included
with the purchase of the camera. It will send -- whenever you get an alert it'll
send still photos to your mobile device, whether you're in the trailer or whether
you're two hours away checking out the territory around where you're camping.
You will get those alerts along with a still photo of what the camera is
detecting. Now the camera is fully waterproof with an IP65 rating. It
operates over Wi-Fi on 2.4 gigahertz networks only. It will not work on 5
gigahertz networks, but usually if you only find a single-band router it's 2.4
gigahertz so that's really not an issue. We use it by connecting it right to the
Visible mobile hotspot network that we have running in our trailer via a HooToo
router, from our most popular video ever which is "Cheap Unlimited RV Internet".
We'll put a link right up here on the screen if you want to know how we
network our trailer, but you can even connect this to campground Wi-Fi if
you're in a campground with Wi-Fi service available. Now just to be clear,
this camera does not record 24/7. You can see 24/7 through the mobile app, but it
only starts recording when it detects heat sensitive motion. If it ran 24/7
you'd be burning through battery in no time flat. On top of that, you'd be
filling up the 32 gig microSD card awfully, awfully quickly, so that's
actually an advantage, not a disadvantage. Now to configure the camera and to
access the alerts, and to access what the camera is seeing. there are apps
available for both iOS and Android --and they're included for free.
The included Cloudview app is available in either Google Play or the Apple Store.
If you have more than one camera you'll see them all here on the app's home
screen. Simply tap on a camera image to enter that camera. This will open the
live camera feed showing camera battery status in the top right. Rotating your
phone in landscape orientation will show the camera's live video fullscreen in
1080p with a date and time stamp. Here's a
sample of the night view in a completely dark environment. The camera will alert
you with a notification each time it detects movement by an object of at
least 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Clicking on the notification will open a history of
alerts. Clicking on an individual alert will open still images captured at the
time of the alert.
Returning to the camera's main screen, pushing and holding the intercom button
allows you to speak through the camera no matter where you are.
Clicking on the record button starts video recording, denoted here on the
screen. The video and image files are recorded both on the camera's microSD
card in encrypted form, and also on your phone.
By sliding over to "History" you can see historical events in a timeline.
You can also bring up a calendar to select different dates.
There's a cloud storage option available, which we haven't activated. Now the way
this mounts is actually pretty darned ingenious. You'll see there's a little
recessed area right here on the back of the camera. That actually has powerful
magnets that attach to a metallic round ball head that we've attached to our RV,
so you can very easily manipulate this and point this in virtually any
direction you want. So here's that metallic ball mount that what I was
talking about. It comes with either screws to permanently mount it, or to
semi-permanently mounted it comes with that really strong red 3M outdoor
adhesive double tape, and that's what we chose because we didn't want to drill
any holes. We mounted this here right in the top of our slide outside the door.
Now I told you it uses magnets, and all it does is just slap on like that, and
because it's on a ball head you can adjust this virtually any way -- up, down,
side to side, so you can capture as much as possible within that 130-degree field
of view. Then when you're ready to travel, all you do is simply remove it and stow
it inside the RV. It couldn't be any easier! Now there were a couple of
similar, if not identical models also sold on Amazon for the same price.
However, this one includes the 32 gig microSD card for free. The others don't,
so this turned out to be the best value on Amazon for the money. Currently at the
time that we're recording this video it's $79.99 on Amazon, and available with free
Prime shipping. And just to reiterate, we have no relationship with this company.
They did not sponsor this video, they did not reach out to us asking us to do a
video on their product. We bought this on Amazon just like everybody else, and
we'll put a link in the video description down below, and we'll also
put this camera in our Amazon store, the Grand Adventure shop on Amazon, so you
can go check this out if you want to add this type of wireless security to your
RV as well. So we hope this information has been
useful to you! We found this to be a great tool in our kit of boondocking
items to give us a little bit of extra peace of mind when we're in an area that
we may not have complete trust in. If you like this video, please give us a big
thumbs up down below! Also down below you'll find the comment section where we
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Adventurers! Until next week when we'll be coming to you from Rockport,
Texas, please remember ... life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.