HOA parking

[Skip]

Almost got the Arlos but realized I would never have time to recharge and be diligent about it.

Went with Wyzecams instead. Power is hard-wired but data is wireless. Has cloud event storage and a local SD card (limited to 32GB which is about 3-4 days of HD).

Integrated IR. Sound alerts (but sometimes that is sketchy). Can set a motion alert pattern. Cams are $25 and with some cheap housing from Amazon they do well outside although mine aren't exposed to water. I painted the housings and these are so small you can't even see them from the curb.

[Irving]

Link to what you bought. Do they come in packages?

[Skip]

Here's what I bought...

https://www.wyzecam.com/

They are a la cart unless you get on the email list and see a deal (this has only happened once). You buy as many as you need, fixed v2 or pan. Each has it's own MAC ID and is config'd via the app.

I bought one to try it out before I bought more and hard-wired.

[CS1983]

Is the wireless via WPS or will it auto rejoin if it loses connection?

[brutal]

Almost got the Arlos but realized I would never have time to recharge and be diligent about it.

Went with Wyzecams instead. Power is hard-wired but data is wireless. Has cloud event storage and a local SD card (limited to 32GB which is about 3-4 days of HD).

Integrated IR. Sound alerts (but sometimes that is sketchy). Can set a motion alert pattern. Cams are $25 and with some cheap housing from Amazon they do well outside although mine aren't exposed to water. I painted the housings and these are so small you can't even see them from the curb.

I bought Wyze cams on sale cheap and tried to use the openIPC/dafang hacks to use them with Blue Iris . Useless. They were always locking up or going offline. Not bad cams for the price, but didn't meet my needs. You can integrate them with TinyCam as is, but that's just one more platform for me to mess with and I'd like to keep everything running through Blue Iris. The cheap Foscam and Hikvision cams work great so I'll just stick with those.

[ETA] Looks like they'll be releasing RTSP via a separate firmware for RTSP users Q2. https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/wyze-q-a-episode-1/18230

[Skip]

Is the wireless via WPS or will it auto rejoin if it loses connection?

I don't know about WPS but I use WPA2 and have no issues. My cams are always up AFAIK. I do get the occasional warning about HD/bandwidth on my outmost cams outside the house.

I just use the Wyze app with them. It is frustrating having to use the app for everything though which is limiting. But for $20-25 each I'm willing to deal with it.

[Martinjmpr]

We put in Arlo cameras in 2017 and they work great. Yes, they do need to be recharged every few months. It's a hassle, yes, but a pretty minor one. I get the ladder out, get the camera down, plug it into the charger for a day or so and then put it back up.

WRT HOA's and the specific question the OP posted, as with most legal questions the answer is "it depends." Some HOA neighborhoods are on public streets and the HOA can eat a dick if they don't like the way people park as long as they are following city/county/state laws regarding public parking (and do your research here, some municipalities require street-parked vehicles to be moved every 72 hours.)

However, some HOAs have streets that are NOT public and therefore HOA rules apply (big condo/townhouse communities are often like this, and gated communities almost always are.) In that case, you can still beat the HOA even if they are technically correct if you can show the rules are being enforced arbitrarily or inconsistently.

Funny story: We live in a neighborhood with a "voluntary" HOA. About 18 months ago the HOA sued a homeowner for not clearing their shed project with the HOA architectural committee. The HOA took the resident to court and lost. We later found out that this HOA has been to court 15 times in the past 3 years suing residents and has lost 14 times.

The HOA rules state that only HOA members can vote which in practice means there is a small "core" of people who just keep voting for each other. The drawback to the HOA being "voluntary" is that most people don't care enough to get involved (there are 199 houses in our subdivision and the highest the HOA membership has ever been is about 45. Current membership is around 30 or 15%.) For the most part they're harmless.

WRT the "value" of HOAs we live right next to a larger neighborhood with a much less restrictive HOA (for example, in that neighborhood they can park RVs in front of their homes - that's a no-go in our neighborhood where they have to be behind a fence.) I've also noted, though, that home values tend to be lower in that neighborhood than they are in ours.

Is it the HOA that makes the difference? Could be - the houses are more or less identical to the ones in our neighborhood but the homes in our area tend to be better kept up.

Having said all the above, our next home (which we will move to after I retire in about 8 years) will NOT be in an HOA neighborhood. Wife and I both agree on that.

[CS1983]

I don't know about WPS but I use WPA2 and have no issues. My cams are always up AFAIK. I do get the occasional warning about HD/bandwidth on my outmost cams outside the house.

I just use the Wyze app with them. It is frustrating having to use the app for everything though which is limiting. But for $20-25 each I'm willing to deal with it.

I'm assuming you have to connect to the cam w/ the app somehow and set up its access to the wireless network w/ network password, then?

My only experience w/ wireless cams has been the DLink ones that you have to push a WPS button. If it drops, you have to manually rejoin by pushing the button again. So I always hated using it since it's not guaranteed to not drop and be dead for the duration of my absence. Always ran a hard line but it limited my placement abilities.

[Martinjmpr]

I'm assuming you have to connect to the cam w/ the app somehow and set up its access to the wireless network w/ network password, then?

My only experience w/ wireless cams has been the DLink ones that you have to push a WPS button. If it drops, you have to manually rejoin by pushing the button again. So I always hated using it since it's not guaranteed to not drop and be dead for the duration of my absence. Always ran a hard line but it limited my placement abilities.

FWIW I believe Arlo cameras are bluetooth connected to the home station and the home station connects to the network via a network cable to our cable modem. So our Arlo cameras are not dependent on the wireless network being up (though obviously we do still have to have internet connectivity.)

[Skip]

I'm assuming you have to connect to the cam w/ the app somehow and set up its access to the wireless network w/ network password, then?

My only experience w/ wireless cams has been the DLink ones that you have to push a WPS button. If it drops, you have to manually rejoin by pushing the button again. So I always hated using it since it's not guaranteed to not drop and be dead for the duration of my absence. Always ran a hard line but it limited my placement abilities.

Yes. You install the app with a set up process that has a QR code. Use the new cam to scan the QR which mates it to your account and then follow the WiFi setup.

I have an inside cam that is scheduled to go down (turn off) during daytime hours and only on at night. It works flawlessly and reconnects at the scheduled time.

My only visibility into uptime is when I check the cams or check events. The cams are always up when I check them. My motion events get everything (packages, cars, etc). The sound events just aren't reliable. I either get wind (nothing) or miss loud noises that I think should be events.

Oh, and only the events go to the cloud. These are 12 second clips. The clips then allow you to go back on the local SD card and capture more footage. You can store that footage to your phone as a vid or take out the SD card and read it.