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Anker Launching New HomeKit-Compatible Indoor Security Cameras Next Month
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To the best of my knowledge, Eufy does not have geofencing on any of their cameras (at least not any of the models that I have). My Eufy Doorbell and Floodlight cam are both hardwired and mounted to my home home. By Eufy 2C cameras are battery powered and easier to move but they still don't have geofencing. When I mentioned all the cameras having "activity zones" I meant you have the ability to configure areas to monitor within the camera's field of view which will trigger a recording event. If you live on a busy street, you could limit the activity zone to your driveway and the camera will ignore motion on the sidewalk and street to reduce notifications of people passing by.
Gotcha. By geofencing I mean the recording settings depend on whether users are in a specified zone. For example, I don't want any recording of the kitchen camera when any family member is within 1/4 mile of home. This is because I don't want anyone living in my home to feel uncomfortable about what they say or do in private. So if even a single person is home, no recording period. But when no family is home, the house is empty or only guests / workers are present, then it should record.
Arlo allows this, though its buggy.
OK, I misunderstood. I was thinking of geofencing as in the location of the camera instead of the location of family members. I believe that feature is in beta testing right now for some Eufy cameras but I am not using it. I took a different approach and only put cameras outside of my house to watch all points of entry so I leave them on and armed all of the time but if I had cameras inside I would definitely want geofencing for privacy.
i was trying to find more info on what encrypted local storage means. I'm new to the whole home security camera movement and so I'm quite the newb. Is the connection to ones home WiFi encrypted? Is the actual data on the SS card encrypted? And if this is HomeKit enabled, does that mean that Anker does not see true video feed at all?
My basic requirements are that the videos don't live on someone else's servers and the connection to my WiFi is secure. Thanks for any input you may have!
I will answer everything to the best of my understanding (and I read a lot about many different cameras before going with Eufy). The Eufy Doorbell cam and Eufy Floodlight cam connect directly to my home Wi-Fi and I can see them on my router's app. The Eufy 2C cameras are wireless to a separate base station then that base station connects to my Wi-Fi (I can see the base station on my router's app but not the 2C cameras themselves).
The Eufy Doorbell cam, Floodlight cam and the Eufy Base Station all have memory cards in them. The base station comes with a 16 GB card but I believe you can put a larger card in it if you wanted to. The 2C cameras use AES-128 bit encryption when they transmit video to the base station for storage and the video is stored encrypted. When you access your video (either live or recorded) over your Wi-Fi, the video is kept encrypted between the base station and your router all the way to your device. Eufy servers do not touch your video files and the video is encrypted all the way from the camera to your device.
The Eufy Doorbell cam and Floodlight cam operate in a very similar way but they use AES-256 to store your video on their memory cards and to transmit to your router. Again, your video is encrypted from the camera all the way to your device and it does not go through Eufy's servers. 100% local storage and NO subscription fees for any of these cameras!
The Doorbell cam and Floodlight cam are not Homekit compatible (at least not yet and I don't know if they ever will be). However, the Eufy 2C cameras are Homekit compatibles and I enabled that feature on both of my 2C cameras. When I open my Homekit app I see both cameras at the bottom of the page (below all my smart home devices on my favorites screen). When you use the Homekit feature, your video is still encrypted but it is stored in your iCloud account so if your house burns down, you still have access to any video that might have been captured before the cameras melted. I hope that helps.
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Wow, this was super informative. Thank you! This pretty much answers most, if not all of my questions. But it does prompt a few more regarding the local storage: If the videos get uploaded to iCloud (once the feature is enabled) does the local storage matter? If the videos get backed up to some cloud service (again, iCloud), then does the local storage act as a backup? Does it constantly delete older videos as new ones get piled on? Do you have to manually take the card out and upload it to your computer, rinse and repeat?
Glad I could be of assistance
The Eufy Doorbell and Floodlight cam are local storage only so the only real downside is if someone were to steal one of them (i.e. pry them off of your house and cut the wires) you would lose whatever video had been recorded because it would only exist on the SD card inside of those products. The Eufy 2C cameras (and I think all their other stand alone cameras) store the video "locally" but on a base station in my house. I have my base station hidden in an area near the middle of my house where it would take time for anyone breaking into my house to find it. I checked to make sure I still had a good signal to both of my cameras (one outside of my house that is pointed at my walk out basement door and one in my garage watching the service door). If someone broke in and stole or damaged these cameras, I would still have video of what happened up until the time the cameras lost signal to the base station.
All of the cameras have the option (that I have turned on) to automatically overwrite the oldest video with newest video when the card fills up. The cards hold several months of video (assuming normal usage on how many people come in and out of your house each day) so I don't worry about losing the several months old video when it is over written. Also, if you ever want to protect a video clip (something suspicious that you want to keep) you can protect that clip via the phone app so it will never be over written. You never have to remove the SD card from any device, Eufy has a GREAT app and you can do all card maintenance from the app.
If you your particular Eufy camera supports Apple Homekit (some models do and some don't) then yes, the local storage essentially becomes a backup. Apple Secure Video allows you tie 1 camera to your iCloud account if you have the 200 GB plan or up 5 cameras to your iCloud account if you have the 2 TB plan. The space consumed by your video does NOT count as part of your storage so even if you only have the 200 GB plan and are using 98% of it already, you can still tie 1 camera to your account without having the video storage count against your plan.
I have pre-ordered 3 of the Eufy Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras (Eufy took pre-orders about a month ago but they have not shipped yet). They were priced low and Eufy gave an additional 25% off for pre-ordering. These cameras will accept up to a 128 GB micro SD card and they are Apple Homekit compatible so they really don't need much local storage. These cameras 2K resolution and are wired for power (USB type cable to a 110 volt adapter instead of using a battery) They connect to your network via Wi-Fi so I don't think they need a base station at all. I am really looking forward to getting them and they should be arriving very soon.
Glad I could be of assistance
The Eufy Doorbell and Floodlight cam are local storage only so the only real downside is if someone were to steal one of them (i.e. pry them off of your house and cut the wires) you would lose whatever video had been recorded because it would only exist on the SD card inside of those products. The Eufy 2C cameras (and I think all their other stand alone cameras) store the video "locally" but on a base station in my house. I have my base station hidden in an area near the middle of my house where it would take time for anyone breaking into my house to find it. I checked to make sure I still had a good signal to both of my cameras (one outside of my house that is pointed at my walk out basement door and one in my garage watching the service door). If someone broke in and stole or damaged these cameras, I would still have video of what happened up until the time the cameras lost signal to the base station.
All of the cameras have the option (that I have turned on) to automatically overwrite the oldest video with newest video when the card fills up. The cards hold several months of video (assuming normal usage on how many people come in and out of your house each day) so I don't worry about losing the several months old video when it is over written. Also, if you ever want to protect a video clip (something suspicious that you want to keep) you can protect that clip via the phone app so it will never be over written. You never have to remove the SD card from any device, Eufy has a GREAT app and you can do all card maintenance from the app.
If you your particular Eufy camera supports Apple Homekit (some models do and some don't) then yes, the local storage essentially becomes a backup. Apple Secure Video allows you tie 1 camera to your iCloud account if you have the 200 GB plan or up 5 cameras to your iCloud account if you have the 2 TB plan. The space consumed by your video does NOT count as part of your storage so even if you only have the 200 GB plan and are using 98% of it already, you can still tie 1 camera to your account without having the video storage count against your plan.
I have pre-ordered 3 of the Eufy Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras (Eufy took pre-orders about a month ago but they have not shipped yet). They were priced low and Eufy gave an additional 25% off for pre-ordering. These cameras will accept up to a 128 GB micro SD card and they are Apple Homekit compatible so they really don't need much local storage. These cameras 2K resolution and are wired for power (USB type cable to a 110 volt adapter instead of using a battery) They connect to your network via Wi-Fi so I don't think they need a base station at all. I am really looking forward to getting them and they should be arriving very soon.
Awesome! Thanks so much for this valuable information!!
Just bought one of each of these and the quality is absolutely dreadful, horribly compressed and simply unwatchable using Home app or Eufy's App—Even with the camera sitting right next to my access point. No ethernet option. The web view requires Adobe Flash!!! Who uses flash anymore? The instructions for connecting to HomeKit are very poor.
Don't waste your money.
Don't waste your money.