simplicam HD WiFi Home Video Monitoring Camera

I normally do not write reviews, but I purchased 2 of these cameras in February to use as baby monitors and was extremely satisfied with the product. As of 2 weeks ago one of the cameras has appeared to malfunctioned and will not even power on after emitting a burning smell.The customer service department is non existent and you can only contact them via email. I've had a case open for over a week and have only gotten 2 email replies. The first stated the cable was broke, try replacing that. The second was after I've continued to fire off emails requesting the defective unit be replaced. Still I just get a response saying that engineering is looking in to my problem. Absolutely ridiculous the type of support you get on such an expensive product.Based on the customer service ArcSoft provides on this product I would not recommend this product to anyone.

As a software engineer, and somebody who's been toying with home security for a while, I really wanted this latest crop of cameras to work. That said, I started with a dose of skepticism surrounding the ecosystems of both SimpliCam, and DropCam.On one hand, streaming my video to some high-powered virtual machine that will have the horsepower for proper video analysis and eliminate false positives sounds appealing.On the other hand, this could also be just a silly way of clogging Internet arteries with useless data, in order to justify a tollbooth. It could also be the beginning of a new chapter in our Orwellian society.After trying the SimpliCam, I'm convinced that the entire product plumbing is about justifying the tollbooth. Unfortunately, the trip isn't worth it.THE GOOD - Fantastic, zero frustration out-of-box user experience great packaging, impeccable instructions, ..product exudes quality - Video quality is fineTHE BAD - Even on the lowest sensitivity settings, I was getting tons of false positives (motion alarms) - Change in room brightness should not trigger motion. - Object shadow at different times of day should not trigger motion. - Constant streaming of video to cloud in the consumer space is a dumb idea. - Eventually, I stopped paying attention to the alarms on my iPhone, which is the exact point at which I realized that this product added zero value to my life. It actually took away from it, which means that I should be paid for the experience, and not the other way around.THE FINAL SOLUTIONI replaced the SimpliCam with a Hikvision DS-2CD2432F-IW 3MP camera which costs less, and is actually an amazing product with great brains/IQ. The camera comes with a PIR sensor (infrared motion sensor) which for me completely eliminates false positives. The camera also sends email alerts with pictures of the intruder (my wife, before I had it all properly set up), and has a free cloud service, if you wish to stream.The BIGGEST problem with this camera though is that it's not at all easy to setup, but if you know your way around computers and can Google a bit (maybe quite a bit) it will do everything. Ours now turns off when either of us is home (iphone detection via home automation), and automatically turns on when we're both gone. Absolutely perfect and free.

We wanted to use this camera as a baby monitor in our room on Windows PC watching our baby sleeping in another room and decided to upgrade from our cheap MYDLINK camera with Simplicam after I red a positive review on one of the web sites I usually trust. The idea of being able to watch your baby on your computer while she is sleeping in another room looks convenient to us and a baby sitter.The camera itself is fine and a picture is a pretty clear with a wide angle and good quality. No issues on this part.The problems came after we started actually using it watching live feed on Windows PC, the way we used it with previous Cam system. The live feed breaks every few hours. It crashes Adobe Shockwave plugin. I am not sure who is responsible for this crash Adobe or ArcSoft software, but I shouldn’t care about what plugin they use. It should work. I tested it with Chrome, Mozila Firefox and IIE11 browsers(all of them updated to the latest versions) and on another Windows PC with much better hardware and the results always were the same.All screenshots and computers specs were sent to technical support few days ago. The response was that it will be reviewed by engineers and it is not an easy fix. NO ETA on fix so far. What I don’t understand is how this cam system was tested prior to selling it. It cannot be used as Baby monitor or security cam if you cannot trust it and it can crash in the middle of the night when your baby cries in another room and you are not aware of it.Looks like if the issue is not fixed in few days it will be returned back. As a really frustrated customer I cannot recommend this camera to anybody for any use so far.

I love this product. In fact, after living with it for two weeks I just ordered three more to cover most of the key areas in my house. Packaging (if you appreciate that sort of thing) is very nice. The product itself appears to be of high quality and is aesthetically very nice (not cheesy looking like the Fujicam that I am sending back to Amazon-it didn't work). Set up was very quick and easy. The app works great with some very nice UI features like the timeline summary of events. I like that this cam includes audio (two way, in fact) so that I will be alerted if one of my CO or smoke alarms goes off. Image quality is quite good and night vision seems excellent. All in all, I can highly recommend this WiFi cam.