dmills913

Hi Tom, I appreciate the dialog. The truth is, yes, We have been unhappy with the system for a long time, and have been looking for replacements. The roku service shutting down moved the timeline up about 6 months, as we were limping along (both from the problems with the system and with the financial sting of having purchased it for so much money 2 years ago). I know that Y-cam does have IP cameras. What we have is called Home Monitor. According to Y-cam, the 15 minute streaming limit is built into the system. There's no way around it. I have talked with them on the phone about it several times, and they just said "if you want more than 15 minutes, you need to upgrade to our IP camera line". The frustrating thing about the whole thing is that nowhere on their website do they mention a 15 minute limit. Honestly, I think for the average user, the 15 minute stream at a time is not a big problem. If you're sitting around watching the cameras for more than 15 minutes at once, most people probably don't mind it cutting out. The way that Daryl described it is likely correct. It's likely that they disconnect users after 15 minutes to cut down on concurrent users. I don't know about why they do it (though I'm sure money is the answer). The truth of it is that according to Y-Cam, the 15 minute is a hard limit for these cameras. I understand what you mean by 3rd party, but I feel that it's a bit disingenuous to say that a piece of software that Y-Cam wrote is '3rd party' just because they wrote it to interface with someone elses system (ios, roku, etc). By that definition, the only method to view a y-cam home monitor camera is through their proprietary web interface. They won't allow a connection to a NVR, nor will they allow any 3rd party software to manage the cameras. The Home Monitor line is sort of their 'bare bones' plug it in and it works system. When logging into the cameras, the settings allow you to set motion rules, and a schedule. There's literally nothing else you can do with the cameras. If I could change the stream method and get the cameras to overcome the 15 minute barrier, I would keep our current system in a heartbeat. According to Y-Cam, it's impossible with their Home Monitor line.

Hi Daryl, You recommended an NVR. I hadn't heard about those before. I looked over the Dahua NVR5208, and it certainly seems to offer a solution in terms of simplicity. I might have misunderstood the video I saw on their homepage, but it looked like the cameras were powered by poe as well. The only thing that was a little confusing to me was that it looked like for that unit at least, the cameras needed to be plugged directly into the NVR. Is this true? If so, is this true for most systems? I would need to do fairly significant rewiring to plug cameras directly into an NVR unit. Other than from a simplicity point of view, is there anything an NVR offers that a software solution like Blue Iris might not? On another note, do NVRs generally come with a remote control? I haven't seen anything mentioning a remote control on any of the Dahua pages I've looked at. Thanks again!

I could be wrong, but I'm assuming when you're talking about 'switching to y-cam's app', you mean use their web-interface? It's possible that our wires are crossed, and we're never going to agree on what constitutes 'fixed' in our situation, but I do want to stress that the Roku was not my idea. I didn't buy 4 Roku's for our schools and try to shoe-horn them into their system. The Roku was their Official method of connecting cameras to a TV. It was on their website as a sales point two years ago when the system was purchased. When I called Y-Cam to go over details of their system before we invested in buying 10 cameras and 4 rokus 2 years ago at $2,329.94, this WAS their 'app', and the 'right way' to do it. I understand that Roku is not a Y-Cam brand, and is '3rd party'. This is true in the EXACT same way that ios is 3rd party. If we were to trash the Roku's, buy 4 apple tv's under the idea that using their ios app, and connecting to 4 tablets/iphones/etc was our way forward, they could just as easily end development on their ios app as they did on their roku one, or their web interface for that matter. Just because they have multiple options doesn't mean that every option is created equal, or that every option isn't just as vulnerable to an 'end of development cycle'. I have used their web interface and ios apps for years, and so I can say with every confidence that in this area, I am knowledgeable. There would be a significant drop in usability for our needs as a school to use their web interface, or stream their ios app over to the TV. The Roku app was dead simple in that you clicked the app, clicked the tv and you were done. The entire login process was done when setting up the app at the beginning, and you never needed to enter it again. Their web interface is a nasty mess. It involves a ton of clicking to navigate, and suffers from the same 5-15 minute at a time problem. For the Rokus, this means that the office managers have a roku remote near their desk that (in 5-10 seconds can bring the cameras back up on the TVs). Switching to a web interface pushed to the TVs by laptops, we wouldn't be able to get away with tucking a laptop into a corner of the office like we could with a software DVR. We would have to have two laptops front and center under the tv's while office managers dig through the menus trying to get the camera to display live. Security wise, this would mean needing to have our password accessible to the staff because they would need to be either a) saved on the computers browser (security flag) or b) given to the staff to type in when they had to log back in (time waster). Again, it's possible that we'll never see eye to eye on this, and I'm willing to accept the lions share of the blame on this. I'm more worried about some future person that may be looking for help and considering Y-Cam as an option for something similar to what we're doing. The web interface and ios apps are great for what they're intended for. They should not, under any circumstances, be seriously considered for a system where the cameras would need to be viewed regularly (up to 5-6 hours a day). The bottom line is that this system wasn't designed for our uses. Y-Cam technical support told me before purchase that the Roku app that they developed was their official way to get content to TVs, their ios app that they developed was their official way to get content to ios devices, and their web interface was for computers. I honestly don't understand why you keep insisting Roku is some '3rd party thing' and 'it's obvious that it wouldn't work because that's not 'their app'.' Roku was equally official to their ios/web options until 2 days ago. You mention the limitation being 3rd party? This is clearly not true. I can only view the cameras on their web interface for between 2-15 minutes before the connection cuts out and it needs to be reconnected. The same is true for their ios app. It doesn't allow continuous connectivity. Y-Cam has 0 options for connectivity to their home monitor cameras for longer than 15 minutes at a time (max). When I called to ask them about this, they kindly suggested that I look into their ip camera line for a future purchase. Finally, you say that the roku app has nothing to do with y-cam. This is patently false. The Roku "Home Monitor" app is a Y-Cam app. This is true in the exact same way that their "Home Monitor" app on ios is also a Y-cam app. Y-Cam paid for the development of the app, and apparently needs to pay Roku for its continued presence in the Roku environment. The email that Y-Cam sent me said that unfortunately, not enough users were using the app, and so it didn't make sense financially. This problem actually doesn't have anything to do with Roku. It's a decision by Y-Cam to end service on ONE of their methods of accessing their video feed. Again, to say it in a different way, Roku hasn't cancelled anything. Y-Cam has cancelled their official roku app. If they did the same thing to their ios app, and it suddenly wouldn't send their camera feed to the ios app, this would be identical to what they did to their roku one. We wouldn't be blaming apple for being '3rd party' if they decided to cancel service to their ios app. Why would we do the same thing for Roku?

This is the crux of the problem though. To my understanding, and the way y-cam explained to me, these are not ip cameras.

I appreciate all the time and effort put into your reply Daryl. Ultimately though, it just means spending more money on our end for a system that we've been unhappy with from very early on. The main limitation is that they will only allow a max of 15 minutes streaming at any time. It is sometimes as short as 1-2 minutes, and usually around 8-10 minutes before the signal cuts out. I have spent hours on the phone with Y-Cam, and they say that it's a hardware limitation of the cameras. This max of streaming time is in effect whether viewing the cameras from my iPad, Computer or through their Roku app. I'm sure that we could jury-rig some system to allow a laptop to send the feed over to the TV (though I'm not sure how we could send two cameras with two different audio signals to the TVs without a solution per TV). Ultimately, I feel that this is a situation where we can continue throwing money at a solution that wasn't really viable from day 1, or cut bait and invest in a better system. I'm interested in the latter. Edit: I have nothing against the Y-Cam cameras when used for the situation that they were designed and marketed for. I realize that our use-case is non-standard. With our budget and knowledge at the time, the Y-Cam system was the best that we could do. I am of course frustrated with Y-Cam support, as they basically promised us (Through the course of several months of back and forth emails) that they would remove the 15 minute limit in a patch for almost a year, and then decided that it was a hardware issue right after our 1 year warranty ended.

Hi Tom, I appreciate your position, but I think I must not have explained the system very well. The Roku TV channel, an app run and paid for by Y-Cam, and the primary reason we bought the Y-Cam cameras, and the Rokus, (the only method that I know of to display the feed from the cameras to a TV), is the thing that is being cancelled. This has everything to do with Y-Cam, as they are the ones 'renting' the channel from Roku. Roku hasn't cancelled anything, and the cancellation email that I received was from Y-Cam. Our system is no longer fine because we cannot accomplish the primary need for our systems: displaying camera feed to our TVs. As this was THE primary point behind our buying the cameras and the roku's in the first place, it's hard for me to see how the existing system is 'fine'. I suppose it may be possible to use an android TV box or apple TV (but we'd need to purchase one for each of our 4 TVs, at our cost), but frankly, I'm not interested in a system where, on a whim, they can cancel our primary usage method. Who's to say that they won't kill whatever android tv channel or apple tv channel they lease? Besides that, I see nothing on Y-Cam's website that suggests they even support this as an option. As far as I know, this will always be an issue because for the Y-Cam cameras we have, the system goes from our camera -> Y-Cam -> the internet. Hi Daryl, I really appreciate your answer. That's exactly what I'm looking for. I hadn't seen those Hikvision cameras, and am really happy to find an option that looks like it will work for under $200 per camera. On the advice of my family member, I'm looking at running a computer with Blue Iris in each school to manage that school's cameras. I like this option because it seems to be an extendable option in the future, and won't have the limitations of our current system. Thanks again!