FOSCAM Home Security Camera R4S 4MP WiFi IP Camera,Wireless Baby Monitor with AI Human Detection Sound Detection 33ft Night Vision 2 Way Audio Camera Compatible with Alexa Black

I’ve been using Foscam cameras for years. When my kids were very young, I would keep them in their rooms as a monitor. Now I use them throughout my house as security cameras. They still work, but there are many limitations given their age – close to 10 years old in some cases. But they do, indeed, still work. With this mind, I reached out to Foscam support to see if there were some firmware upgrades now which might overcome some of the limitations like modern browser support and platform support other then Windows (eg, Mac). Because I was a long time customer and agreed to write this review, they provided me a free unit to test. So here it is.I will be comparing the current (Aug 2020) model, R2C 1080P to the older models I have, the FI8910W and FI8918W. The new model offers the following improvements:• Higher resolution (1080p v 480p)• No dependence on ActiveX controls• Full control from Windows and Mac using browser other than Internet Explorer• Control via mobile app• Ability to record without application running on PC• Improved interface for scheduling motion detection• Better color reproduction• Slightly smaller and more sleekI am using the new model to record on a schedule and using motion detection. Both work well. The ability to schedule is much improved in the browser app as you can just drag the mouse across a series of time blocks to activate. The old camera allowed you to active a full hour at a time, but if you wanted it on the half hour, you’d have to click to deselect. So, setting a schedule at 1230a means I activated 12a to 1a, but then Id have to click 7 days of blocks representing 1200a and 1215a. With the new camera, the mobile app just uses a slider to set the time, and the browser interface allows you to drag to deselect. Nice.I never used the email settings or the FTP settings on the old cameras. I tried setting up the FTP today on the old camera, and I never got it to work. With the new camera, I wasn’t going to use FTP or mail, either, but then I thought about this: why do I need an app running all the time to capture motion detection? The old models required Internet Explorer open to capture the video. Shouldn’t the camera just capture it and store it or send it somewhere? Well, in fact, the new one does. There’s no storage built into the camera that a user has access to, but it does have the ability to either use a micro SD Card or FTP. With the SD Card, the file is stored on the card. With FTP, it’s sent to an FTP server. Since I don’t have a spare Micro SD card laying around, I decided to use the FTP server. Windows 10 has an FTP server built in, but it’s not turned on by default. There are numerous places you can find on how to setup the FTP server. Once you have it setup such that you can access from another computer on your local network, you just use the same parameters for the camera. Put in the IP address (or hostname), the user name and password, and you’re good to go. You don’ t NEED to buy cloud service if you can setup the FTP server. If you can’t, then perhaps you should look into buying the cloud service to store your images and videos. In the end, it’s nice to know I can turn on the camera and have it FTP over my files to my PC (which is on all the time) without having to keep an app running on my PC. You may think I’m splitting hairs since leaving my PC on 24x7 with an FTP server is the same thing, and perhaps I am. But if you have storage connected to and an FTP server running on your router, which stays on all the time, you won’t need your PC left on 24x7. I already leave my PC on 24x7 so it’s a no brainer for me.I was wondering how well the IR light would work since the old camera had a ring of IR lights around the camera, and I can’t see any on the new one. The new camera has a better picture, of course, and the IR lights are not as obvious, but they’re there. Picture quality at night is very good.The color reproduction is clearer and more accurate on the new camera. The video produced is really nice and not as grainy as the old ones. It will never replace your DSLR for video quality, but in terms of security it works.I can use Chrome now to access any feature I want. The old cameras required I use Internet Explorer utilizing ActiveX if I wanted to record videos or use voice function. ActiveX is 25 year old technology full of security risks, so it’s nice to see I don’t need it any more. ActiveX only runs on Windows, so Mac was out. Now it’s not. Yay!There are lots of feature I’m sure I’m missing, but this covers what’s important to me. I have the old cameras which do what I know, and now I have the new one which has improved on the old ones in many ways. If it lasts as long as the other ones, this is going to be an excellent camera!

All of Foscam's Camera's hit the sweet spot for me in terms of price vs. quality. I have 7 around my house both indoor and out. This one was a replacement for my original R4 which kinda crapped its pants recently (won't aim to its lowest point anymore), but it gave us 6 years of reliable dog check-ins. I like that the updated R4S is USB-C instead of a proprietary power jack.For a do it all inside home camera at $63 this thing is a solid value. 2-way audio works great so I can tell my dog to get off the couch when I'm not home. If you're into a DIY DVR, Foscam cameras work great with iSPY, a fantastic free app which is how I record rather than paying for the Foscam DVR service. Not the BEST cameras out there, but excellent value.

(Below is my revised review from 10-May-2019. See below for my original review as of 03-Apr-2018)===REVISED REVIEW: 10-May-2019===After more than a year of continual use of this camera, I have learned several new things about it and the Foscam cloud service and the iOS app and other pieces that may be important factors when deciding to purchase this device.The short story goes: if you only need this camera to be able to peek in and look around at times of your choosing just because you are curious to see what's going on, the camera is fine -- even without a Foscam cloud subscription. If you want to use this camera as an actual "security camera" (e.g. receive notifications when it detects a sound or motion event, need to access locally-stored videos remotely) then you need to expect to be paying for a Foscam cloud subscription. Kudos to them for offering lots of shapes and sizes of plans at competitive pricing, but factoring in the costs of both the camera and the cloud subscription, you are just as well off with something a bit more name brand.Here are the details: First off, it is my opinion that Foscam is intentionally vague (and misleading) when discussing how the product operates when it is connected to a cloud subscription and when it is not. While the changes are subtle and minor, they may be significant enough to change your mind about purchasing this unit. For example, once the device is no longer under a cloud subscription (including the free one-year plan that comes with the initial camera purchase), while you will still get alerts (when the iPhone app is working at all, more on that in a bit), you will no longer receive the thumbnails that show what triggered the alert and -- since you don't have a cloud subscription -- you cannot view videos from sound and motion events in real time. The thumbnails come from cloud-stored videos, so if you have no cloud, it makes sense that you have no videos and, therefore, no thumbnails. Additionally, even if you are storing video locally on the camera, you cannot view that content from the iPhone app. Yes, I am aware there is functionality built in to do so, but after a week of exchanging emails with technical support, they were unable to make that work. I have to be on the same LAN and from my desktop computer using the Safari browser to see the videos. If I cannot view the videos remotely, then the Storage Card Video Player function in the app is a useless function.In addition to the difference between how the camera and app behave when there is a cloud subscription and when there is NOT a cloud subscription, the Foscam iOS/iPhone app is functionally damaged. When it works, it works perfectly, and the Apple Watch component works equally well. The problem, however, is that it does not work reliably for more than a week at a time. After more than a week going back and forth with Foscam support (which is pretty responsive, kudos to them for that), the app just "half forgets" that you are logged in. I say "half forgets" in the sense that I can open the app, not be asked for a login, and I can view the camera live stream feed and see the alerts that have not been viewed/marked as read, but I will NOT receive alerts (phone or watch) when sound or motion is detected until I log out of the app and log back in again. It will then behave as expected for seven days and then stop and revert to the "half-logged-in" behavior. When I am logged out, I cannot see the camera's live stream (which I would expect), but even when I am logged in and can see the stream, I do not get alerts until I log out and back in, and even then only for seven days. So you are forced to repeatedly log in and out of the app. And this is regardless of whether you have a Foscam cloud subscription or not: it behaved this way for the past 13 months which included 12 months of covered (free) Foscam cloud.Lastly, even when on my desktop on the same LAN as the camera, I cannot view the videos on the storage card unless I use an undocumented cgi-bin script (URL) to start the on-camera FTP server. Support had to send me the email for this script after other troubleshooting steps. And the camera has its own filesystem format on the SD card, so you cannot just remove the card and insert it into your Mac or Windows system to read them that way. This is just not something that should be a problem in the first place, and isn't on other platforms like Arlo, Blink, and others.So, in summary, for a manual check-in camera, this is a good option. As a security camera, the price above is misleading: expect to pay at least $40/year extra for a cheap Foscam cloud subscription. For the same money, I am going to switch to a new name-brand camera system with fewer built-in technical issues.===ORIGINAL REVIEW: 03-Apr-2018===This camera is a good, non-full-system device for monitoring your premises. It is a relatively simple device, offers a minimally functional cloud storage option, and has decent flexibility. If you just need simple monitoring, this camera is a good choice.I have been using this camera for over a month now, and this is the feedback I can provide. It is important to note that I am using this camera with a macOS-centric environment, which is clearly more challenging to do than in a Windows-based environment, but still functional...once you know the "one weird trick" to get the most configurability, flexibility, and usability out of this camera.PROSA) Very reasonably pricedB) Takes standard MicroSD storage up to 128GBC) Makes good recordings with user-selectable qualityD) Sound recording quality is also very goodE) Has minimal but passable configurability options (the ones that make a difference)F) Does provide for remote alerts and monitoring on your smart phoneG) Email responses from Foscam support team are relatively promptH) When on a solid Wi-Fi network with good Internet access, camera alerts to your smart phone are very fast and remote live monitoring is very clean and consistentI) Infrared/night vision mode is quite goodJ) Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) works quite well. Not the fastest, but very functional with very good range of motionK) Setting up the camera (initial setup, Wi-Fi) was relatively straightforwardCONS1) Provided instructions are almost useless, unclear, and miss the one thing that SHOULD be in them2) While the camera does offer a lot of configurability and flexibility, you have to know where to go to find it all, and it is quite well hidden3) Camera does not provide for "motion detection zones" at all4) Camera does not have a comprehensive monitoring on/off schedule capability5) Smart phone app (at least on iOS) is buggy, slow, and not well designed (UI is fairly poor)6) Stored video (whether cloud-based or local storage) requires conversion before it can be watched on a Mac7) MicroSD slot in camera base is quirky, easy to think the card is inserted properly when in fact it is not inserted properly8) On a macOS-based system, you can only use the Safari for local camera browsing. Other browsers WILL NOT WORK!Short story long, this camera was clearly designed to work with Windows, not macOS. It can work with macOS, but only from within Safari, and even then it's not all that wonderful. If you use any other browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox) with their (Foscam's) camera website, the web page will try to force you to download a Windows executable (.EXE) which, of course, will not do anything useful on a Mac. Only Safari will work properly.If you want something better than just a standard webcam to monitor your apartment or home, but don't want to go the whole"integrated home security system"; with cameras and a DVR, this is actually not a bad choice. I was considering the Amazon camera, but I am not using the whole Alexa/Amazon infrastructure, and wasn't planning to start with just this camera, so I was looking for an alternative that wasn't a whole "system." This camera is just about right. While I would have preferred a little more functionality and ease of use, I am getting about 85% of what I wanted in something that is relatively inexpensive to use and can be expanded (with more cameras) if/when I feel the need.Like most integrated home security system providers offer, the Foscam camera also has a cloud storage/review component with varying levels of accounts you can buy into which determine how long uploaded video is preserved before it is deleted. You can, if you so choose, also just rely on local storage on the MicroSD card.There appear to be two different ways to log into the camera: One is through the cloud system, which allows you to review uploaded video and perform minimal remote configuration of the device (I am guessing settings are pushed down to the camera after they are made), the other is through a local (your LAN) connection to the camera. This is what most people will want, but it is not discussed or described at all in the documentation that comes with the camera. I had to communicate several times with the Foscam Support people before they pointed me at an article on their website that told me how to connect directly (over Wi-Fi on my LAN) to the camera. You must download an application called the Equipment Search Tool which will, in turn, identify all cameras attached to your local LAN (the camera's MAC address does not even show up on my router, nor does its DHCP client lease). Once you see your camera, you can click on it from there, which will then open a Safari tab that will allow you access to the complete set of camera configuration options. This should be the ONLY thing they talk about in the manual, but it is not mentioned at all. As I have mentioned, you can make "SOME" changes via the Foscam Cloud web page, and many of the same changes can be made from the smart phone app, but the vast majority of configuration needs to happen as described above.It would be nice to have a full scheduling capability: what time to turn on, what time to turn off, a separate schedule for each day of the week, or even weekdays and weekends, but that is not what they offer. There is a simple 24-hour schedule, and that applies to every single day. Not very flexible. Clearly Foscam could (and should) do better here. Also, it would be nice to have an "occupancy/monitoring off" control from the smart phone app, but that is not an option either. You can turn off motion and sound monitoring after digging into the app-based configuration options, but it's not convenient, and it also requires that you remember to turn it back on again if/when you leave. Since I leave my camera on all the time (because I don't want to forget to re-enable it later), I am constantly getting alerts even though I know it is just me walking around my apartment. This is also a place where motion detection zones would be useful.The iOS version of the app is, as mentioned above, buggy, slow, and the UI is not very well designed by modern standards. Buggy in that even though I've turned on TouchID to log into the app, the app frequently asks me for my TouchID twice before it will let me in. Support told me to uninstall and reinstall the app, which does fix it temporarily, but within a few days the double TouchID sign-in problem is back. I just live with it now. The app also will show me an alert icon (always a 1) even though there were multiple alerts (all me walking around). I will have to go into and out of the alert tab several times in order to clear them all. A single, comprehensive "Clear All Alerts" would be nice, but that's not there either. Also, the time bars below the live camera feed are confusing to use. It is very difficult to tell what you are playing/asking for. The whole app looks like something from eight years ago. Maybe the Foscam app developers should buy a RING and take a look at their user interface. Much cleaner, simpler, and easier to use.All that said, the camera is good. It serves the basic needs, is only mildly annoying, is priced right for what it is, and support is at least existent and prompt, and they mostly understand what I am asking them. Good, not great or fantastic, but definitely not poor or fair either.