Live view only, no external access, simple?

Hi all.

I am a total newbie and hoping some of your collective wisdom can save me some time and money.

TLDR: Any advice please on an indoor wireless IP camera with no bells and whistles, no recording, no motion sensor, no 2-way sound, no remote access, no cloud access and no subscription needed to use.

I am a software guy by profession and I am more than capable of understanding tech, but I have a fulltime job and young child with special needs and not a great deal of time on my hands for research. Normally when I need to make a decision about a tech purchase I am almost always able to do it myself over the course of a few evenings of in depth googling, etc I know how to find out what I need to know and I am able to make a decision pretty quick.

But... now I want a camera for home and I am flummoxed. I have spent many, many hours searching review sites and information sources and forums and still I am really struggling to find out what would work best for me. There are such a wide range of cameras and every review site has a different list, and sooo many seem to be basically adverts claiming to be reviews. I have had a look at your sticky (which was super useful) but still I am not quite able to work out what I need. The cams that are the "bestsellers" on Amazon seem to have zero external reviews that I can find, which makes me nervous (annke for example) and the sites that I have visited all seem to list a massively different selection, with a few names always popping up but generally all not what I am after...

I need a cam that we can view from a smart phone (android), or via a TV (I can work all that stuff out) but I want it only as a way for us to keep tabs on our son when we are not in the same room. I do not want to be able to view the house remotely, or record anything, or have motion sensors or sound sensors or any of that stuff. All of the nest cams and the like seem to be based around cloud recording and remote access and motion sensing and aimed at people wanting to be able to monitor their home when they are not there. What I want is more akin to a baby monitor. I want to be able to see what is happening in another room of the house in real time. I don't need to record it. But the dedicated baby monitor branded cameras are all kinda... well.. rubbish. I also need any app that will actually be used for doing the viewing to be super simple to operate as it will not only be me using it.

I would like to be able to start out with one for his room and then maybe add others over time, including outdoor for the garden. I am not opposed to wired ethernet but would prefer wifi and have a good powerline setup as well as a (ubiquiti) wifi network that is solid.

Many thanks for your time and for any advice you can offer.

http://www.toysrus.com/products/wifi-baby-monitors.jsp

I guess you are looking for cheap system.

You can just get a cheap Wifi IP Camera (I would go for "branded" like dlink).

http://us.dlink.com/products/home-solutions/day-only-wi-fi-camera-dcs-930l/

You are a IT guy, you should understand anything that you can view over WIFI (Network) can be configured for internet viewing.

They essentially means the same thing.

Thanks very much for the recommendation, I will check it out.

Yes I am fully aware that these cams can be accessed over the Internet. But I would just like something a bit old school where I feel I have a modicum of control over this and prefer if that was as a result of me deciding that that is what I want to configure, via port forwarding etc.

So many of the consumer "home security" IP camera reviews I have seen scare me by starting out with "first you simply create an account at http://mycamcloudaccessblah.com and register your device and download the app, both of which is a prerequisite, and from then on setup is suuuper simple and your recordings are automatically stored in the cloud, so long as you keep up your subscription".

I just want a camera that is on my home network only, until I want to enable it to be accessible from anywhere else. I don't want to have to worry about the security of the website of the company I purchased it from.

Thanks very much for the recommendation, I will check it out.

Yes I am fully aware that these cams can be accessed over the Internet. But I would just like something a bit old school where I feel I have a modicum of control over this and prefer if that was as a result of me deciding that that is what I want to configure, via port forwarding etc.

So many of the consumer "home security" IP camera reviews I have seen scare me by starting out with "first you simply create an account at http://mycamcloudaccessblah.com and register your device and download the app, both of which is a prerequisite, and from then on setup is suuuper simple and your recordings are automatically stored in the cloud, so long as you keep up your subscription".

I just want a camera that is on my home network only, until I want to enable it to be accessible from anywhere else. I don't want to have to worry about the security of the website of the company I purchased it from.

Axis, Mobotix, Avigilon,Samsung, Bosch, will all do what you want.

Axis, Mobotix, Avigilon,Samsung, Bosch, will all do what you want.

I assumed he's on budget.

These are not budget equipments. " title="Applause" />

Thanks guys for taking the time to reply. And yes, you are right, I am on a bit of a budget; if only because this is my first foray into it, plus we just moved home so there are a lot of projects competing for budget

I will take a look at your suggestions for sure, I was also thinking about using a Raspberry PI and an old webcam I have lying around as a temporary solution while I do some more research.

Many thanks both!

Thanks guys for taking the time to reply. And yes, you are right, I am on a bit of a budget; if only because this is my first foray into it, plus we just moved home so there are a lot of projects competing for budget

I will take a look at your suggestions for sure, I was also thinking about using a Raspberry PI and an old webcam I have lying around as a temporary solution while I do some more research.

 

Many thanks both!

Get a cheap IP camera rather than tinkering with raspi/webcam if you want something working rather than as a hobby trying to get something to work. I assumed your time is more valuable in this case. Cheap IP cameras are , well, cheap.