Philips In.Sight Wireless Home Monitor

Surely everyone has got their arse’s or boob’s out for a CCTV camera right? No? I know its not just me and I mean Arse and not my boob’s. CCTV used to be really expensive and difficult to manage, big VHS tapes and then the 10 second gaps between frames.

When I worked in Retail the cameras used to be a waste of time, poor quality and difficult to prosecute from the footage taken. Nowadays things are different, technology has taken over and along with smartphones, you can actually monitor your house or business from anywhere in the UK.

The quality is amazing and you can receive notifications and footage in a number of ways.

Philips have brought out a wide range of “App Enabled Devices” adding to their range a couple of different cameras including Baby Monitor and Home Monitor. We have in our possession the latter and we’ll be using it over the next few weeks in our on-going review section.

Set-up is quite easy and I did the manly thing of not looking at the instructions, firstly you need to download the app from the Apple Store and it does walk you through a step by step guide on how to set each camera up. Firstly ensure you are connected to the WiFi that you will be using to host the cameras, at this point its also a good thing to have your WiFi password.

Enter the password of the WiFi when prompted and the app cleverly produces a QR code that you have to hold in front of one of the plugged in and powered up cameras. This then configures the camera, rename it to whatever you wish. eg. Living Room, Under The Toilet Seat, etc and then you can set up notificatons based on sound and/or movement.

If you have got a dropbox account you can configure the cameras to store the photos and the footage in a folder to view at a later date. Yet the footage will be available on your iphone or ipad to view.

There is an option to view the camera through your favourite web browser including, Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome. But I found this very patchy and found I had to keep logging out or even closing the browser to view the 2nd camera.

After a days worth of use, I found the cameras really good, if a little gimmicky. One camera was set up facing our car park and the other in our reception/entrance area. Notifications were set up on the latter, first using the audio function which we found to be a little bit annoying, as although you set a sound level based on recommendations, noisy girlies in our front office kept setting it off.

Instead we went for movement at 100%, this way if anyone came to our door it would notify us and record. I like the fact that you can hear the sound also which can be quite useful when the parcel man has come with your next gadget!

I do feel like a little bit of a stalker though, as every video that is sent to my notification bar of my iPhone, I have to watch! I will run these cameras for the next few weeks and keep you up to date with how we get on, but please take a look at the footage it records.

As far as I am aware, the app is only available for iOS and you do need to register for an account with Philips. There is an option to upgrade to Pro, but cannot see the benefits of this just yet. The ‘Pro’ version offers you uninterrupted live streaming over 3G or WiFi, which I suppose would be good if you are using it as a baby monitor. It also gives you more alerts and will keep the alerts for up to 3 days.

The basic package should be ample and will allow live streaming for unlimited time, so long as you are local to the cameras and on the same wifi network, share with 3 users and not 10, and live streaming over £g for a max of 5 mins, with unlimited sessions per day. Don’t forget to use your dropbox with the camera, this way the alert expiry shouldn’t matter.

Make sure you are on a good data plan as the picture quality is good, so you will use quite a bit of your allowance.

This In.Sight comes with built in microphones, so I wouldn’t worry to much about that side of things. Of course you need the iPhone and/or iPad for set-up.

Get yourself a dropbox account, not only is it a great companion for these little beauties but its a great tool in general.

And for the record, Gadget Geek Boy does not condone spying on your loved ones in anyway, nor do we support stalkers!

Although we are showing Amazon adverts and affiliate links on our page, we have purchased this Amazon Echo Dot with our own funds and have simply reviewed the unit as a hobby. We like being upfront and honest, we hope this review reflects this.