iCam HD 360: baby monitor or standalone surveillance system?

Is the Internet of Things a fashion brand or a new branch of gadget evolution? For myself, I was looking for the answer among the many reviews of various devices that are available on the market, but I could not find the answer. I didn’t find it until the iCam HD 360 camera from Dadzhet company came into my hands. Control from a smartphone or via a browser, two-way voice communication, alerts by specified criteria - in general, not an IP camera, but a whole complex of security and video surveillance. Let's see how good she is!




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First look
High-quality box and good packaging. After opening, we get the manual for the initial setup of the gadget, the camera itself and the power adapter.



Schematically, the entire network connection is made in four actions: put the application on a smartphone / tablet, turn on the camera, show the camera on the smartphone screen a QR code and you can enjoy the picture.

But we will start with the inspection



The camera itself is a cube with a slightly distorted geometry of the faces. The lower third is the base and the platform, and the upper part rotates around a vertical axis and contains a camera eye. The first photo shows that there are holes in the lower part: there are LED indicators for operation and a microphone. A camera is installed in the upper part, which can work in a vertical plane, raising or lowering the camera eye at a small angle. A motion sensor is mounted under the camera, and there is an IR LED around the camera for shooting at night. The viewing angle of the lens is 100 degrees - this is not a fisheye, but it is already seen quite widely.
Go to the left side. A speaker is hidden behind the holes for feedback. Its volume is so high that those in the other room heard my call. Very handy feature, if there is a need to talk with someone who is at the camera. For example, hang a camera over the front door and talk to uninvited guests in your absence.
On the back there is a microUSB power connector, a button for connecting to a Wi-Fi network (WPS), a reset button and a connector for connecting a microSD card. You can record video by event (motion or sound), as well as around the clock. It is noteworthy that the kit includes a power adapter with microUSB output: 5V 2A. Its only drawback is that the cable length is 1 meter, which may be small. But you can always buy another adapter with a USB output and pick up a USB cable of the desired length.
There is nothing on the fourth facet.

Work through the network
The most interesting thing starts when the camera is connected to the network and the application is installed on a smartphone or tablet. The user has access to the main menu.



All work begins with this menu. You can view the alert history or take a picture, you can connect Google Drive to store video and photos. You can also connect Amaryllo cloud corporate cloud service to store the last 24 hours of video. In the end, you can go to the camera settings and make fine adjustments.



You can set the privacy mode by day and hour so that the system does not wake up at night, when the cat will walk around the kitchen in front of the camera eye. Motion or sound sensors are also activated. That is, if a cotton happens in the room or the child wakes up and screams, and the camera is turned in the other direction, you will still be notified - a very useful function.



Here you can set up alert types: with a photo or just text. I prefer to always receive photos or videos, in case the camera is in security mode - there is a chance that the camera with the drive will be found and taken away.



It should be noted that firmware updates for this camera are periodically released, and when checking the camera version I was asked to upgrade.



In this menu item, you can select the resolution with which the online broadcast will be conducted. Add that you can connect the time stamp, synchronized with the NTP server. The "Night Vision" parameter is responsible for activating the IR illumination for night shooting.



The camera can be connected to three different Wi-Fi networks and "move" from place to place without re-operation to connect to a wireless network.



The next menu item adjusts the speaker volume, microphone activation, and two-way communication.



A separate item connects the Google Drive account to store photos and videos.



The camera has a slot for microSD card. And you can even save video to a server using the SMB / CIFS protocol - it’s very convenient if you have a NAS and you want to store all data not in the cloud, but on your own server.



You can also give the opportunity to see a picture of another smartphone or from a computer, via Firefox browser version 33 and higher. Unfortunately, other browsers are not supported. In this case, all that is required is access to the manufacturer's website, login and password, which are generated in the application. The question immediately arises: how to connect to the camera if the manufacturer's server becomes unavailable?

Finally, we turn to the most important thing - management and viewing pictures. We connect to the camera and begin to control the rotation: there is nothing simpler and it can not be - just drag the picture to where we want to look. We pulled from left to right - we look left, pulled from top to bottom -
looking up. Everything is intuitive.
Now let's touch on the sound and motion detection functions: the functions work fine, so you can use the gadget as a video nurse and as a security system. You can hide the camera and watch the office or put it at the entrance and know when someone will come to the door. One click on the screen and the connection becomes two-way - on a loud speaker, you can safely communicate with the other person.
And go to the most important thing - the image. In the settings you can see that you can customize the transfer of pictures in 360p, 480p and 720p modes. Mode should be chosen based on network bandwidth. If the network allows you to transfer data at a speed of more than 2 Mbps, then you can set the highest possible resolution. In other cases, it is better to reduce the size of the picture by achieving a smoother and more stable motion of the frame. It should be immediately noted that the camera was not designed for artistic shooting, so there are noticeable color distortions. But at night, the camera's backlight allows you to see objects at a distance of up to 8 meters! In the afternoon, the picture of green grass and blue sky looks like this:



Conclusion
The Internet of things has opened for me from a completely different side than I expected. This was not a revolution, but an evolution in use. Now there is no need to build a video surveillance system or buy a baby monitor - you can put a mobile camera where you need and just keep your smartphone on hand. The simplicity of setting up such devices may lead to the fact that soon you simply forget how to configure complex gadgets. Well, the quality of the picture is quite enough to recognize the object. By the way, when reducing the brightness, the color distortion also decreases!

Readers of the site have the opportunity to buy the Cloud ICAM HD camera with a 10% discount on the GEEKT-ICAM2 promo code within 14 days from the moment of the publication of the review.