New webcam for backup camera. (Evil laugh)

I'm going to pay for this one. No doubt in my mind.

We've been wanting a backup camera on our boat. Mrs doesn't want holes drilled or wires run. I found this little gem on Amazon:

Wireless, battery-powered webcam

It has two way audio, automatic night vision which works surprisingly well, and is waterproof. It also has a number of features two work as a security camera but we didn't care about any of those. In fact, we disabled the motion detection because every time the wind blew the flag or someone walked down the dock, it was trying to alert me.

We really only wanted it for an on-demand, live webcam. It can be accessed remotely through free iPhone or Android software. When not being accessed, it returns to sleep mode to conserve battery power.

Saturday, I installed it inside the eisenglass on the aft deck ceiling.



It's already waterproof but also nicely protected from the elements behind the eisenglass. It has been running for three days now and still shows 100% battery strength with an estimated 120 days before recharge is necessary. This is consistent with online reviews of it. Pretty cool!

The camera body has a pretty powerful magnet in it and it magnetically attaches to the round ball base. It is surprisingly secure yet easy to remove or reposition, if needed.

This is a screen shot of a live view from the camera. It'll do nicely to see where the back of the boat is.



So, today I'm at work. Mrs sends a text message to say she was going out on the aft deck to do some cleaning. I accessed the camera remotely from my iPhone and waited until I heard her out there. Then I keyed the remote mic and said, "Hey baby!"

She screamed.

Yeah, I might be paying for that one for a while. LMAO

But the camera is awesome!

John

Can you use the hotspot on your phone as the wifi when you are out of range of internet service? I am not great on computer stuff so I am wondering how you connect to it underway. My MFD has wifi in it, could I connect the camera to it?

Comodave said:

Can you use the hotspot on your phone as the wifi when you are out of range of internet service? I am not great on computer stuff so I am wondering how you connect to it underway. My MFD has wifi in it, could I connect the camera to it?

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Probably should have included the connection as a detail. Our wifi is via a cellphone with unlimited data used as a dedicated hotspot. Works great. The webcam is connected to that.

The camera needs internet access to be reachable by any viewing device and the viewing device will need to configure it. Our Garmin also has it's own WiFi zone but it does not have a connection to the internet. I suspect it would not be able to find the camera.

Interesting, I just ordered one of them. Worst case if it won’t do what I want on the boat, I can use it in the house. Hopefully there is a way to get it to connect to my MFD which would be the best case. Then I could use it as a backup camera and view it on my 2nd MFD screen.

Comodave said:

Interesting, I just ordered one of them.

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Three people in our marina ordered them after seeing ours and how well it worked. Hope you have good luck with it, too.

John

Well, I will let you know when I get it and get if fingered out... Thanks for posting about a good wifi camera. I have been wanting to buy one, or more, but didn’t know which to buy. Not my area of experience.

That looks like a nice backup camera solution...ordering one today. Finding this solution, pretty smart...pulling that trick on The Admiral, not so much ;-)))

Sweeeeet! I think I'll get this or similar for next season. (I haul out in 2 weeks.
Not for rear view, but for security facing the dock (I bow in).

If I like it I will order several for inside our home when we are gone we can see my 99 year old mother and check on her easily. Sometimes she does not hear her phone when we call and we worry until she finally picks up.

Looks like a great idea but needing an internet connection to function wouldn’t work well for us as too often we don’t get cell service for the hotspot.

However, that would be great on my boat. I guess I need to find a wireless solution that doesn’t require internet.

Setup camera with your own intranet on the boat, maybe just use a wireless router? No internet needed?

And how good is the night vision? The dash cams, some show amazing night vision now.

And how long is the delay since you are viewing the image through a cloud-based app? That's usually the show stopper for most people who want to use webcams as backup cameras.

sdowney717 said:

Setup camera with your own intranet on the boat, maybe just use a wireless router? No internet needed?

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Generally these type of 'canned' solutions that use a proprietary app to view the camera feed will require an internet connection.
I would say the one being talked about here will stop working once the 'hotspot' phone loses internet connection.

The camera connects to the WiFi network, and then the internet, and 'announces' itself to the company's servers, so that they know where on the internet to find the camera. The app on the phone/ipad/device then also connects to the company's server, and the link between client device and camera is done on the internet side.

There are ways to do it contained to a LAN and not involving the internet or 3rd party servers, but they're usually a bit more in-depth as far as setup and nowhere near as 'plug and play' as the type being discussed in this thread.

I guess if you're only using it to back-in to the slip then generally you'll have an internet connection there so it should be fine.