Keeping up with the latest technology can be tough, and it consumes a lot of time and effort.
Just a couple of years ago, an alarm system and some fire detectors were the pinnacles of home security. The indoor camera was unheard of.
They were reserved for the extremely rich and extremely suspicious. Installation was hard and tedious, and it required much extra hardware.
Nowadays, in the age of the Internet of Things, things have changed. Wireless cameras have become ever more popular.
Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket, which keeps them connected to the world 24/7.
indoor and outdoor cameras used to require several days of work for the installation and easy to set. Now, they’re a simple DIY solution for the best home security known to humankind.
With so many systems out there, it can be a little intimidating to pick just one. If you’re still interested, be sure to check out Blink Wireless Camera Review.[wpsm_titlebox title=”” style=”3″]
About Home Security Cameras in General
Do I Need Home Indoor camera?
I can’t answer that question for you. It depends on who you are, where you live, what you do, etc. I always thought a dog was enough to keep intruders away. I was very wrong.
It hid under the dining table while the scumbags took the money right off it! Granted, it was my mistake to keep it there. But if I had a wireless camera, at least I would have been able to notify the authorities on time.
A camera won’t keep you out of trouble, but you’ll have peace of mind knowing what goes on around your place whenever you’d like. It could also provide crucial evidence in a worst-case scenario.
Most home invaders tend to be somewhat careful, so the mere sight of a security camera might steer them away from your home. As I said before, I can’t make up your mind for you. But you wouldn’t be reading this article if the thought hadn’t come across your mind already.
What Do I Need Before Buying A Wireless Camera?
Home security systems have improved dramatically in the last couple of years. Just a few years ago, to get your home easy to set with cameras, you 
had to do much stuff beforehand.
The cameras were wired, so you had to drill through your walls for each camera’s power and data cables. That usually meant a team of electricians roving through your home for a couple of days.
Next, you had to set up your controller. A camera controller is a box, not unlike a Blu-Ray player.
All the cameras connect to it, and it camera starts recording the view live footage on a hard drive or DVD. It goes out to a TV if you want to monitor the live feed. The whole process was a real pain.
Things are quite different now. For the blink indoor camera, you only need three things. A smartphone and two AA batteries. No controller, no TV, no electricians are turning the house upside down.
Editor’s Note: Are You Looking For an Alternative Security Product? Here is are 9 Of The Best Arlo Security Cameras Reviews that work great with protecting your home and family.
What Are The Features I Should Pay Attention To?
As with all new consumer products, there is a lot of wireless home indoor cameras on the market. All of them offer some exciting features, but you should stick to the ones you need.
For example, an excellent mesh camera system will work flawlessly with hundreds of cameras with building-to-building connectivity, and it has excellent security.
But do you need a $$$$$ solution if you only need a couple of cameras around your home? Here are a couple of features I took into consideration when I was researching wireless security for my own home:
Wired vs. Wireless
Earlier in the text, I was talking about wireless systems as if they were the greatest invention since sliced bread. The truth is — wireless systems do have some downsides.
Still, their advantages are far too significant to be overlooked. Just keep in mind that a camera can be powered with a cable and still use a wireless network.
On the other hand, there are systems with cable Internet that also have an aa lithium batteries installed (even though the battery serves as backup power in most of these cases). Here are some advantages of a wireless system:
- No cables necessary
- Easily portable
- No additional network equipment needed
And some disadvantages:
- Dependent on the wireless range
- The network may be unstable due to interference (microwave ovens are known to cause trouble, but only when they’re operating)
- They require aa lithium batteries to operate
- They’re more susceptible to hacker attacks
The gist of it is, wired systems are aimed mostly at business users. Their robustness and security are more important than their price is pretty cheap and ease of installation. For home use, the lack of prerequisites and ease of installation make wireless systems a much better fit.
Indoor vs. Outdoor
Most of you have never heard of an IP rating. It’s getting thrown into the vernacular lately with the rise of water-resistant smartphones. It’s an international standard for measuring Ingress Protection (IP) of a particular product.
I honestly never thought about how my new camera would handle the pouring rain we get almost all year long. But if you only want to set up cameras inside your home, you shouldn’t worry about that.
An IP rating of IP45 or above should be quite enough for you. The rating of 45 means 4/6 dust resistance and 5/9 water resistance. It may not sound like much, but it should keep your wireless cameras safe from rain and wind for at least a couple of years.
Editor’s Note: Are you a business owner? Here is our guide on a commercial camera system for you to look at that will surely help you protect and monitor your business
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A Full Review On The Blink Wireless Security Cameras
1. The Blink Indoor Camera
In my search for a battery operated wifi security camera that would best suit my needs, I ended up spending much time browsing online. I was quite surprised when I noticed some big companies have a camera of their own. To elaborate: Blink was a startup company funded through Kickstarter. They were very successful with their campaign, with more than a million $ secured with a $$$$$$ goal.
Soon after they secured their funding and started sales, some big companies took an interest in the company. Noticing their potential, some big company quickly acquired the entire company and started selling their products with some big company badge slapped onto them.
Keep in mind; this is excellent for us customers with good customer service- A Big Company Owned This product that doesn’t associate themselves with the wrong product. Even if you do get a fluke, they have the best warranty and return policy known to humankind. You shouldn’t worry – this Blink Wireless Camera review will most likely put your mind at ease.
The blink indoor camera has quite a lot of features, some of which I pointed out earlier. In this section, I’ll give you a more detailed look into each end every one of these. You’ll be able to see exactly what’s good about it, what could be improved, and how it compares to other wireless home security cameras on the market right now.
The Brain
The blink indoor camera uses an ISI-108-2 System on a Chip (SOC) by Immedia Semi, which holds the key to its prolonged the battery. Being something of a camera nerd myself, I researched this one thoroughly.
Let me say this is an impressive tiny beast. Thanks to the ingenuity of the engineers over at Immedia Semi, this computer does not need external DRAM for video clips encoding. To put it, in one move, they reduced both the power consumption and the cost of production by order of magnitude.
It encodes video clips at up to 30 frames per second, using the H.264 encoding format. That ensures a small file size, which is very important when you require a live stream in HD quality.
This little chip even clears up the video clips using 3D Noise Reduction. It can take JPEG stills that are up to 5 megapixels. It provides the industry standard of record motion detection, temperature measurement, and the two-way audio camera starts recording.
Each one of these can trigger a camera that starts recording in 100ms (one-tenth of a second). All of this ensures blazing performance with minimal power consumption.
The Body
The blink indoor camera is a square-shaped, rounded-edged white box. It measures 71x71mm, and it’s 30mm thick. The front also has a slightly conical shape to it, accented by the grooves all along the front of the device. This home security camera comes with a mount that is adjustable for vertical rotation.
There’s a serial number on the back, which you’ll need to connect the camera to your phone. It’s best to pair them up first or write down the serial number before you mount the camera onto the wall.
On the front, there is a dome housing. The record motion is detected and temperature sensors in the center, with the camera sensor right above it. In between, there’s a white LED light. The microphone is located just to the right of the central dome.
It’s made out of durable plastic, and it features 2 AA battery slots and a micro USB port. You can use the port to power the device if you don’t wish to rely solely on battery power and if you want to update the camera software.
The camera operates from 0° to 35℃, and it’s designed for indoor use. It automatically detects motion from up to 20 feet away from the camera, but you can adjust the sensitivity.
The camera records 720p video, with a 110° field of live view. It has a fixed focus from 3 feet away to infinity. The device weighs less than 100g (93g to be exact) with the batteries inside. It’s small and unobtrusive, but it still has an LED indicator that lights up when it’s operating.
The Soul
The device comes with a small box called a camera and a sync Module, which connects all of your cameras to the Blink Cloud Storage Server. That’s the main link between your blink app and the cameras. You can connect up to 10 blinks indoor cameras on one camera and async. You get 2GB of cloud storage, and the server starts to delete your oldest video files once you fill the local storage up. Most of the other companies include a monthly subscription for cloud storage.
All of that technical stuff is easy to use because the blink indoor camera is incredibly intuitive, yet so full of features. You can easy to set various things such as motion is detected sensitivity, clip duration, camera names, and so on. It sends you notifications when it detects movement, but you can jump in anytime and watch a live stream to see what’s going on. When your battery is low, you’ll also receive a notification.
The blink home monitor app works on both Android and iOS, and it’s compatible with several smart home systems.
For example, the Alexa integration works surprisingly well, and IFTTT can help you automatically download the recorded view live footage on your computer, bypassing the risk of it being deleted once you fill up your cloud storage.
You can also schedule your blink indoor camera, so it only operates at a designated time. The blink indoor camera is account-based so that several people can access a single system. On the other hand, one user can access multiple systems, if necessary.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, the blink indoor camera presents a tempting offer. Perfect for new users but not featureless, it walks the line between price and quality.
Inexpensive but not cheaply made at all, this solution works great for indoor home use. It’s backed by a bulletproof warranty and has support for smart home integration with Alexa and IFTTT.
2. Blink XT — The Big, Bad Brother
By now, you’ve probably read more than you’ll ever need to know about the Blink Wireless Camera. But you shouldn’t look at it as a bad thing. You now have the perfect basis for comparison to the other cameras out there. One of these comes from Blink as well. It’s called the Blink XT. In essence, it’s the free version of Blink Wireless Camera.
The Brain
Let me start by saying that the Blink XT uses the same “brain” as the Blink Wireless Camera. I’m glad to see that those smart engineers were going by the famous saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
You’ve already heard all about the ISI-108-2 by Immedia Semi. You heard how fast and power-efficient it is, so I’m not going to bore you with all that. Especially not now when we have so much to talk about.
In the XT, Blink gave us a 1080p camera with Night Vision enabled. Remember when we talked about Illuminated vs. Non-illuminated vs. IR-illuminated cameras?
This one is an IR-illuminated camera. What that means is you get full night vision capabilities, with the only restriction being you’re going to see your footage in black and white.
The upgraded camera retains the 110° field of live view and fixed focus as the blink indoor version, but you have an option to zoom the picture up to 3x digitally. All of this combined makes for a pretty decent upgrade in the guts of the Blink XT compared to the Blink Wireless Camera.
The Body
Probably the most striking difference between the Blink Wireless Camera and the Blink XT is in the looks. The Blink XT retains the same shape and size, but the design is different.
It’s almost entirely matte black, with a vertical oval outline on the front which houses the camera, motion is detected, and temperature sensor dome, IR LED, and microphone. The outline is a shinier black or even dark grey. Still, this change isn’t there just for looks.
The Blink XT is sporting an IP65 protection rating. What that means is that it’s dustproof, and it has a 6/9 water resistance rating. You can spray it with water with no concern whatsoever.
Even if you accidentally drop it in water and pull it out, there’s no worry. Keep in mind; water-resistant does not equate to waterproof. You shouldn’t keep the device submerged in water for more extended periods.
Its darker color scheme also makes the Blink XT easier to hide, especially in the ledges and corners of your house. More creative readers could also think of a few places around the house where these cameras could be positioned, completely unnoticeable.
The Soul
The only other thing different about the Blink XT is the color of the camera and a sync. The one you get with the XT is black. There are no other differences. The connection procedure is also the same.
You use the same blink home monitor app, and the blink home monitor app can handle multiple Blink Wireless Cameras as well as multiple XTs at the same time without a problem.
Conclusion
The Blink XT provides a suitable upgrade for it has over the Blink Wireless Camera.
Other Recommended Buying Guide on Security Cameras For Outdoor:
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Final Thoughts
In this article, I presented two compelling products from the same manufacturer. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon the Blink Wireless Camera completely by chance.
Hopefully, people reading this article will have a better stance on home security and what options it provides nowadays. With the exponential growth technology is experiencing right now, it may be challenging to keep up with the times.
I think I managed to bring the subject closer to home. The Blink Security Cameras might be great for people looking to bring their home security to another level.[/wpsm_titlebox]
