SafeHomeCamera for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By Irishendr1x

  DOES NOT WORK

  Tried setting it up and it just says disconnected from camera every time I try to view the stream.

  
  
• By DeeCeeCo

  Doesn’t do anything

  Blank screen…delete!

  
  
• By alchemusic

  very easy to set up

  This app was extremely easy to set up. SafeHomeCamera recognized the camera (Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920) right away. Both iOS and PC versions of the companion app (SafeHomeViewer) connected to the SafeHomeCamera server without issue. The iOS version even allowed for painless configuration by reading an on-screen QR code. Nice! Thus far, I have been able to connect through the "Local IP", but not through the "Public IP"... At first I suspected it was due to our firewall, but I added an exception for port 5566. When that didn't work, I disabled the firewall entirely. Still nothing. It would be nice to be able to access the camera when I'm out of the house, rather than just from the other room. I work from home, so for now, it's useful as a driveway camera to see if we are getting a delivery, or if someone is trespassing. A few features I would very much like to see added to this app: * A better implementation for internet (as opposed to just intranet) streaming. I haven't been able to get it to work, and I'm fairly tech savvy. * Some sort of security login. If anyone with the IP can view the camera feed, this is a major security vulnerability and privacy concern. * DVR capture with motion triggering; either on the server side, the client side, or better yet: both! It's nice to be able to monitor a webcam wirelessly, but what if something happens when I'm not watching the video feed? Unfortunately with this app, there is no permanent record of the event. Video recording would be a major, major improvement, and a highly desirable feature. Congrats to the developer for releasing a product that is easy to use and actually works (at least for local camera viewing...). Its features are minimal, however, so unless more features are added, I will probably need to transition to another system like zoneminder. Unfortunately, zoneminder is Linux-only with no Windows support; hence my desire to try SafeHomeCamera/SafeHomeViewer. UPDATE: Per the advice of another reviewer (thanks, hallamigo!), I went into my router's config (usually accessible through 192.168.0.1 or similar) and forwarded port 5566 to the Windows Mini I'm using as a camera server... BOOM! Fixed the remote connection issue. Now I can view the camera from my iPhone; even with wifi turned off (i.e. through the cellular data connection, which doesn't pass through the local network). :D This is a fairly advanced sort of tweak that the average computer user probably wouldn't know how to do. For this reason, it would really be ideal if it weren't necessary to do such things in order to connect to the camera remotely. But it does work!

  
  
• By hallamigo

  Works great, as long as you open the firewall port

  I had to open up my firewall to allow the port and then forward that port internally to the computer that has the camera - once I did that it worked great. Seems to cut out a little here and there, but I'd blame that on the Internet.

  
  

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