I am very pissed off at Nest Cam!

Hardware
1

I have an issue that the only way I can create good quality images from a snapshot (via API) if I am watching the live stream from the Nest camera via the app or browser.

They sad it would work if I would have a subscription, otherwise the camera goes to a standby mode. As soon as I posted that this is not what I expect from a $200 camera, my post was Unlisted in 10 minutes.

Seems to be they really do not want to communicate to the customers that their camera is not really good unless you pay the subscription fee. You cannot even record the stream to a local drive or NAS or something.

I am wondering what would be the best forum to write a nice article about this.

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https://nestdevelopers.io/t/nest-snapshot-url-bad-image-quality-if-not-watching-live-stream/810/7

2

Good to know that we can’t record to a local storage!, I was planning to get one of these for myself. They look very cute…

3

It’s the google software model applied to hardware. …

4

Yeah, I definitely will not buy more of these. Looking for some other option, researching for a good camera with a good angle of view, possibly wireless with HA integration which can record to local disk. If I find a good one I will post it here. If you have any suggestion please share. Thank you!

6

Thanks for the input. Can you record the Arlo stream to a local storage on your LAN network? Does it have any API / can you capture screenshots? (I would like to use it for long term time lapse recording)

Thanks again!

7

Arlo Pro has a local storage feature (check this for the explanation: https://kb.arlo.com/1146857/How-do-I-set-up-local-storage-backups-on-a-USB-device-using-my-Arlo-Pro-base-station) but it only records 5-second clips.

Compared to Nest Cam, Arlo Pro is a better device since it doesn’t rely on Nest Aware. Lastly, yes, Arlo has an open API for developers to use.