AtHome Camera Keeps an Eye on Your Castle Over Wi-Fi, 3G, or Edge

by February 5, 2009       App Score: 4.5/5  

AtHome Camera Pro - Remote video surveillance for home security (AppStore Link)
User Reviews
3
AtHome Camera Pro - Remote video surveillance for home security
Developer: Circlely Networks Incorporated
Price: $7.99 Download on the App Store

athome camera iphoneEver worry barbarians will storm the gates when you're away from your castle? Me too, which is why I downloaded Sunray Networks's AtHome Camera app.

Before you can use AtHome Camera the first thing you need to do is download and install AvsServer from the company's Web Site. The server software does the work of finding your desktop's IP address and selecting the port to use. Set up a login ID/password if you want to connect to the server over the Internet. You won't need that info for your internal Wi-Fi net. For good measure, your login ID/password are encrypted.

AtHome Camera is one of a few Web cam app in the App Store that enables you to see what's happening at home, or anywhere else you have Web cams on your iPhone or iPod touch. It supports up to four Web cams.

What's more, you can trigger AtHome Camera to start recording in MPEG-4 format, save the video on your desktop and stream the recorded video to your device. According to Sunray, I should be able to stream video via Wi-Fi, 3G and EDGE. Streaming via W-Fi was surprisingly responsive. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to access my server via EDGE and frankly, I couldn't care less because it would be impossibly slow anyway.

You can also preset AtHome Camera to record and playback at two different intervals, remotely control the Web cam's frames per second, video quality and image size.

AtHome Camera is a heck of an app. I've been looking for something like this for a while. I've been wanting to set up a remote camera at my front door, using an old laptop, so I can see when mail and packages arrive and whether that knock on the door is from my lovely neighbor who needs a cup of sugar or a gang of pamphlet-waving Jehovah's Witnesses.

AtHome Camera has offers free version if you want to try AtHome Camera on the cheap. The free version connects to a single Web cam and lacks remote start/stop recording.

Sunray also sells AtHome Video in the App Store for $3.99. You can use that app to stream home movies and other videos stored on your desktop to your iPhone/iPod touch.

AvsServer works runs on Windows PCs only but the developer says a Mac OS version is coming soon.

Image Gallery: AtHome Camera Pro - Remote video surveillance for home security

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  • Dan

    Orblive also has webcam capabilities. I have been pleased with that as a solution for web cam viewing. It of course also allows access to your media library for live TV, video, music, and photos.

  • http://editorialengine.com Michael Alexander

    Before I did this review, I searched "webcam," "webcams," "web cam," and "web cams" and iCam and Orblive didn't come up.

    After ap's comment, I went back and dug deeper and found "My Camera," a similar app, which I assume is one of the two that you refer to.

    I couldn't find the second one. Please give me the name of the app so I can check it out. Much appreciated.

    With 18,000-plus apps in the App Store (3,000 alone in the past month or so) it's easy to miss apps but I should have been more careful. I fixed the mistake.

  • Jorge L

    I can't connect to my athome camera I type in the extenal ip but it still doesn't work, I enable UPnP on my desktop still can't connect or view my camera on my ipod touch can anyone help

  • carl

    I also am unable to connect the support email address is so far helpful but takes 24 hours to reply to each message, getting frustrated! Port is open on the router pointing to the correct local ip address of the computer but still not working.

  • isaiah

    to $ way to pricy