ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera Review

In this ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera review I look at the ieGeek ie86 wireless security camera to determine whether it offers good value for money, as well as investigating the features and aspects of its operation.

If you’ve looked at any of the other review articles I’ve written on this site, particularly the Bluetooth Bulb from China, or the Goodmans Soundbar, you’ll know that if I think something is rubbish I’ll tell you. So in that respect, you can be pretty certain that this review is at least considerably more trustworthy than the potentially paid for reviews found on large e-commerce sites.

ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera Features

I’ll not spend too much time on the features as you can find them on the product page of any e-commerce site that carries them. I’ll link to the product on Amazon (note, it’ll be an affiliate link – see our disclaimer for more information). From there you can see more of the features. But in this review I’ll cover the features that either aren’t clear on the product listing, or those that I particularly use.

ieGeek Security Camera is really easy to setup

Once you download the app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, the camera is ridiculously easy to setup. I don’t think I’ve encountered an easier system – and I have used a few. Simply point the camera at the 2D barcode and it will connect the app to the camera for you.

Wireless Network on the ieGeek ie86 Security Camera

The wireless setup is again very easy – however there is one small potential issue – at least for me. The wireless network only works on the 2.4Ghz band. This isn’t a huge problem so long as your network has the spare bandwidth available. Most probably will. I tend to run most of my network on 5Ghz now so there’s a bit of bandwidth available on the 2.4Ghz band. To be fair, the camera doesn’t take up much bandwidth anyway.

Does The ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera Support Motion Detection?

It certainly does. And it’s pretty good at it too. The camera supports three sensitivity levels. I’ve got mine set on medium and it seems to register any time the dog moves around. An alert is then sent to my mobile phone and the camera begins recording. If you don’t have an SDCard in the camera or subscribe to the ieGeek cloud storage facility then you’ll only get 6 seconds at a time stored. If you do have either the cloud storage or an SDCard then you can configure how long to record for. Speaking of storage;

Does the ieGeek Camera Have SDCard storage?

The ieGeek ie86 camera does have SDCard facility and in fact this is the storage we use. You can use the ieGeek cloud storage feature – and for some it would be entirely appropriate. For us, it’s too expensive just to store videos of when our dog moves. This is why we bought the camera as we have a new dog and wanted to make sure he was settling in.

Be aware though, you will need an SDCard that supports Class 10 speeds. Most these days will but if you’ve got one laying around in the cupboard there’s a chance it won’t be fast enough. Ours wasn’t – so we bought the SanDisk Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Memory Card which works a treat and has more storage than we’ll need. If you run out of storage the camera will delete the oldest footage in a rolling overwrite fashion.

One thing to think about though is that if you’re using this camera for security footage then it’s entirely possible someone could break in, spot the camera and remove the SDCard (and steal the camera!) leaving you with no footage to see who the perpetrator was. That’s where you might want to consider the ieGeek cloud solution. We’ve not used the cloud storage solution though so we can’t comment on whether it’s any good or not.

What’s the Night Imaging Like on the ieGeek Camera?

For the price of the camera – especially when it’s on special on Amazon, the night footage is really very good. We’ve included a little humorous video of our dog overnight to show you how it looks. You’ll notice that when the camera detects motion it also records any sounds that are occurring in the area too. This can be really helpful – particularly if you’re using the camera as a baby monitor for example. However, in this case a picture (or video!) speaks a thousand words – so below is the video 🙂

Can You Use A Wired Connection On the ieGeek ie86 Camera?

Yes, you can. We haven’t tried this yet – though we may shortly. I’ll update this when I have more information. I can’t find any information to suggest that the camera supports PoE though, so my suspicion is that you’ll either need to use the power supply that came with it (microUSB connection) or get some sort of PoE to 5Volt USB splitter device if such a thing exists. However, if you want the camera to operate somewhere where your wireless doesn’t but you have an ethernet cable in the vicinity then you can definitely use it.

Can You View the ieGeek ie86 Across The Internet?

Yes, you can. Once the iOS or Android app is set up you can view the camera anywhere there is internet access. You can also remotely control it across the internet and even use it as an intercom. We have noticed though that there can sometimes be a bit of a delay between us saying something and it coming out the camera speaker. But it is useable and it may depend a little on the speed of your internet connection.

What Are The Best Features Of The ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera?

No review of the ieGeek WiFi IP Security Camera Wireless Pet Camera would be complete without listing our favourite features – so here they are;

Remote Control Pan And Tilt

Yes, this budget camera features 350 degree vision through remote control pan and tilt. Not only that, but it features some fairly intelligent tracking capabilities that detect movement and automatically pan and tilt to attempt to keep the moving object in the picture. For the price, this is a feature we’ve not seen in other cameras. And it works fairly well – with one small exception in our case…

Our camera is located in the living room. If you look at the nightime video you can probably just see an additional room off to the left of the picture. When the dog moves out of the room where the camera is, and into the adjacent room he essentially disappears as far as the camera is concerned. It then ‘hunts’ for him. When it can’t find him it returns to where it last saw him. This is pretty much to be expected to be fair, although the hunting can be annoying it might be better to simply stay put. But that’s our only gripe with the automatic tracking and to be fair, it’s minor.

Built In Mounting Base

The camera can be mounted either flat on a table or shelf for example. But perhaps more impressively, it can be mounted using the built in mounting plate either onto a wall, or onto a ceiling using 2 mounting screws. The screws and rawl plugs come in the packaging if you decide to fix the camera to a solid base. If the camera is mounted to the ceiling, the image can be rotated 180 degrees so that it shows the right way up!

iOS or Android App

In our view, the app for the ieGeek Pet Camera is pretty good, it comes with a variety of features and is really very easy to set up. To set it up, just install the app from the iOS or Android Play Store then open it on your phone. Press the large Plus Icon in the top right hand corner and follow the instructions on your phone. It’s very self explanatory and very easy to use.

Once your camera is linked it will appear on the front screen montage. You can choose a name for each camera that you have if you have more than one and of course you can add additional cameras. Clicking on the picture of each camera takes you into a screen where you can control the camera. The camera will rotate around its base and can tilt the lens up or down as you wish.

Control is via the small directional arrows at the bottom of the screen. If the camera can see more than can be shown on the screen then you can move the phone either side and the picture will move accordingly. This is handy if the camera view is wider than can be shown on your phone for example.

You can activate the speaker on the camera to use it as an intercom, and you can also activate the microphone to listen to what’s happening remotely.

Using the small camera icon on the control panel under the picture, you can take a snapshot of whatever the camera is viewing at the time – and a small video icon underneath the picture allows you to record to your phone in real time too. This could be very handy if you’ve spotted something that perhaps the camera hasn’t for example.

You can use picture in picture to enable the ability to watch your camera while you’re using other apps on your phone. It should be noted that the app we’ve done our testing with is the Android App, so the iOS app might be slightly different.

You can choose which definition you want to view the camera on – this can be very handy because you can view the camera in SD which is quite efficient on bandwidth, when you’re away from home and viewing across the internet – with High Definition viewing when you’re at home on your local network.

One really neat feature that I think is awesome, though my good lady doesn’t, is the panoramic photo capture. Set the camera in the center of an area and then tell the app to take a panoramic photo. The camera will rotate fully to the right, then start taking stills photos as it progresses to the left. Once the photos are taken they’ll be stitched together into one large panoramic photo.

The only negative we can really find about the app is that although connecting to the camera is very easy, it does take a long time for it to actually connect. So, for example, if you get an alert to your phone and immediately open the app, it can often be another 10 to 15 seconds before the app actually connects to the camera. By which time the event you wanted to see may be over. Of course you can review the recording but it would be nice to connect in a reasonable timeframe.

Alerts

The system can be set to high medium or low sensitivity for alerts and automatic recordings. We’ve placed ours on medium since that seems to be the best option for our needs. You can also set up the app to alert you if it detects a baby crying. We’ve not really tested this since we have a dog, not a baby 🙂

Through the app you can also set how often you wish to be alerted to movement and finally you can customize schedules for when you wish to be alerted. This could be handy if there’s times where you don’t want to be disturbed – such as perhaps when you’re at work and someone else is looking after your dog or baby.

We’ve used this ourselves for toilet training the dog. He’s not quite there yet, although he knows that he needs to go but never actually wakes us up. The camera spots him mooching around and sends us an alert to go and let him out. It’s saved the carpet on a few occasions already!

Where To Buy

We bought ours through Amazon here while it was on special offer. They can also be found on eBay if you prefer that way instead.

We’ve found it to be a great quality budget camera that’s absolutely packed with features and works fantastically well for our needs. The image isn’t as sharp or clear as it might be with a higher end camera – but for the price it’s hard to argue with.