My client wants a camera on their gate and front door. Maybe a few other places.

I am not a fan of Google which I believe owns nest but this isn't going to be spying on their tax records so that isn't a big deal here.

I/they don't want it tied to Alexa or other assistant service devices if possible.

I am assuming they all connect to a phone/tablet and they use Iphones Ipads, (Apple products) if that makes a difference.

Any good or bad experiences?

Is there a specific model to look at or avoid?

Some advertise solar chargers, how long is battery life before charging on average?

Thanks

We have a Ring and it has been good, gotta charge it about once a month but you can wire it to charge without removing it each time. It connects to our phone and we can see what it going on and talk to people at our door if we are not home. The only issue is putting it in a place where it won't be too sensitive to what is going down road. School busses and large trucks set it off 50-75 feet away, but we finally found the perfect balance and it doesn't happen as much as it used to. Another good thing is anything that is going on in the neighborhood we get notices from everyone else that has a ring...

Check out Eufy, stand-alone and no fees
But the HW and that’s it, very happy with my 4 cameras

I have a blink doorbell cam and its terrible. It takes forever to connect and they can't seem to figure out why. The delivery guy can ring the doorbell and drive off by the time I can pull video up.

I have some Wyze brand pan tilt zoom cameras and they work pretty good, especially for the price.

I have the Zumimall doorbell camera, no complaints have to charge it about every 3 months YMMV.

https://www.amazon.com/Doorbell-Wat...led/dp/B07X134Z5Y/ref=asc_df_B07X134Z5Y?

I have a Ring also. Wired to the original home doorbell so no charging required. Mine is connected to Alexa but that is not required. The video/audio is on the phone(s) through the app. Works pretty good. Thinking about another one for 2 views outside the house.

EDIT: We have a couple Arlo cameras at our rental property(in a 9 building complex) They work OK but we were told the solar chargers would be fine...in our location/application they're not. In the process of hard wiring them.

We have a Ring door bell and a Ring spotlight with a camera.

Not a big fan.

We have a 200mb+ internet connection and eero web wifi. Yet sometimes the alerts are instantaneous and sometime they are delayed.

The spotlight camera will sometimes activate when a car drives down the street but miss a car in our driveway.

It costs me $80 a year to have access to recordings.

Nest.

I have Wyze cameras. Some people say they are iffy. I don't mind them, but it's more of a see who is there or who was there. Not a quick notification and audio is a crap shoot. I have a camera over my door to see the driveway and who comes up to the door. It requires a power supply so I use their light socket adapter. It also turns on the light if there is movement at night. I have micro SD cards in all of them to view playback.

Had a Ring doorbell. Worked fine. Got rid of it after reading more about who has access to it without the owners permission. No Thanks

So what you are saying it can be used to see when the homeowners leave the house? Can they also turn it off? Never heard of any issues like that with anyone I know that has one...

Thank you for the options.

I have another question. Probably stupid but hey,, what the heck.

They have a fence along the walk to their front door. They want a camera at the fence. The fence is about 8 to 10 feet from the porch corner post.

If I place a post near the fence and place the camera there it will be in direct sun and rain. Should I place it on a post or on the corner post of the house and if I do can I set the notifications and volume to make it work over the distance?

Also can I tie the one at the fence and the one at the front door into the same app?

I use reolink camera's and nvr set up.
but you can use the cameras as stand alone and pull it up on computer or an app.
they also have internal slots for sd cards to record for a while.
you can set them up for notification as well.
while they do have battery powered wifi camera's that would work for your fence application, if it is visible from the front door, why not mount a camera pointed that way instead?
I have one of the battery powered ones, but didn't like having to replace the batteries. depending on traffic in the area they last about a month for low traffic. a week with high traffic. just had a bunch of rechargables to replace them with.

the gov't doesn't need your ring doorbell to know where you are,what you are doing etc...

Something else I hadn't thought about until I read up on these posts.

As a security camera they are worthless if you don't store the video away from the camera.

How much does a monthly subscription cost?

Some advertise "6 second loops stored to the cloud for free" is that good enough?

Not for me, I have a week recorded.

well, for security camera's I figured it was the opposite.
if someone broke into my house they would steal the dvr to prevent me from having evidence, thinking they got the recordings.
each camera has a SD slot so if they take the dvr, I still have local recordings.

of course to your point, if they took the cameras and dvr, I would have nothing.
reolink can be set up to send images to your phone like Wyze cameras do, so that would be something.

and not to be political, but apparently even if you have a full face image of someone the cops generally don't care.

We have Amazon Blink cameras set up around our place. They alert your phone immediately and upload videos to the cloud for free, no subscription fees. They delete from the cloud after about 30 days. In the mean time you can download and save whatever you want.

Yeah I agree. That micro chip we all carry with us every where we go. Tells them everything they need to know. But, I'm not putting up a camera for them to use at my house. And I don't agree with the people who say I don't care. I don't do anything wrong anyway. That's not the point. It's invasion of privacy.

very true... but the genie is out of the bottle, and no way to put her back it... it is a 'her' isn't it??? i don't want to offend....

hire an old guy to sit on your porch.

"GET OFF MY LAWN !..........."

We have both NEST and RING cameras around our home. No issues with either really.