In the past I’ve had most Sonoff cameras which tend to be basic compared to other stuff I have – but initial impressions – this looks good.See photos – self explanatory and there’s a large speaker grill on the side.The camera comes with full instructions and a decent USB-C lead (no power supply).
As you might imagine it works with their eWeLink App – no hub required… It is therefore a phone-home job, but before you say anything – I was at the airport today and developed a problem accessing my home via Home Assistant and VPN (now solved) – but eWeLink and other phone-home type cameras kept working no problem.So, plugged in using the first USB-C lead that came to hand – the pan and tilt checking started up and a bright blue LED flashed.Good start.
I opened the eWeLink APP and noticed the option to scan the QR code on the bottom of the camera….ADD DEVICE – NEXT.Done – that was easy.
I stuck with the default name of CAM-PT2.And now the camera was on my list of devices in the eWeLink APP.Next – a familiar-looking page popped up showing the camera and controls – BUT – black screen with a refresh symbol.
Oh, dear.I backed out and came back in.Success.
Image quality looks ok even on 2.4Ghz WiFi which I picked by default.Decent frame rate good enough for recording general video.Yes, I like it already.
Taking a quick scan down the instructions I noted ONVIF/RTSP… oh and an update – I’ll have that.Cloud storage – OFF, local recording – needs an SD car.No FTP but that’s ok.
The SD card goes in the bottom of the round camera section near the reset button.Night vision options are infrared, white or smart.Quality settings are 1080p or 360p.
At 1080p, very little in the way of compression artifacts and at full screen, the frame rate was flawless.Not an extremely wide field of view – but then, no annoying distortion either.Despite a strong WiFi signal, sometimes when I was adjusting the PTZ I got a “network timed out” message.
My broadband isn’t perfect right now but I would have preferred if the camera had automatically recovered from any issues.Also the centre button the PTZ doesn’t do anything and using the arrows leads to somewhat over-aggressive pan and tilt.I’m sure if others mention this, Sonoff will adjust that sensitivity or lack thereof.
There is no option to use 5Ghz WiFi.The ONVIF control specifically mentions Home Assistant.Thats a good thing.
Of course there’s a lot more than this but that’s enough for one day.
