Kasa Smart Security Camera for Baby monitor, 1080p HD Indoor-Camera for Home Security with Motion Detection, Two-Way Audio, Night Vision, Cloud & SD Card Storage, Works with Alexa & Google Home (EC60)

Excellent value for money, can definitely take some abuse.
I originally bought these as a budget camera to put inside one of my rainforest terrariums. The form factor of these ones was perfect, especially compared to their outdoor variants. I didn’t expect these to last more than a month or two.Pros====- They’ve been rained on multiple times per day (from the mister system), fallen into the water basin, fallen onto some rocks, caked in mud, scratched up by reptiles, and 5 months later are still are going strong. For a not rated for this kind of abuse, these far exceeded my expectations.- Excellent price per value. This is incredibly helpful when you need multiple cameras to capture different angles.- Pretty good night vision for the price. I’ve seen worse night vision systems on more expensive models.- Decent enough image quality for the price. It’s not anywhere near perfect, contrast is a bit lackluster, but it’s good enough that you can see what’s going on most of the time.- Low heat output. These average around 83 F in my terrarium and I’ve never seen one get above 88 F.Cons====- The app can be finicky. Luckily, it’s pretty easy and straightforward to get the cameras set up in the app. I’ve used cameras around this price point that fail even that first step. The camera app is generally just buggy. They do update the application often though, and sometimes those updates do seem to resolve some of the bugs. It’s not nearly as solid as other camera apps though.- Motion Detection is extremely spotty. I maxed out the sensitivity on mine, did not use activity zones, and it still misses some events it should pick up. Sometimes, it will be accurate enough to pick up a small worm peaking out from under a leaf and wiggling around. Other times, it blatantly misses a large human opening the terrarium doors with their face filling the entire frame.- Auto night vision will sometimes stay in night vision permanently. I wish there was a setting to set the threshold for it changing back from night to day. If you have a shaded part of your house, it will never be bright enough to toggle back from night to day.Conclusion======It’s like $25 (as of this writing) a camera and survives a decent amount of abuse. I have about 5-6 of them now for my terrariums and have yet to have one fail. Despite it’s flaws, you can’t go wrong for the price.

Audio Quality is poor other than that video quality is great!
So I bought this camera for my kitchen because I couldn’t figure out why when I get home there is always a mess on the floor and I finally found out why. It’s because my dog can somehow stand up and knock things down on the counter. I was at work when I got a notification of movement so I opened the app on my phone and I could speak to my dog. After reviewing the footage later that day, the quality of the microphone is poor. It’s not good at all. You can even hear it in the video. Other than that it’s a very good camera for under 20 bucks. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a cheap high quality camera and the monthly subscription to get notified of movement is very affordable. It was like $2.99 a month or something like that. Great camera

Adding a telephoto lens to record car license plates
Adding a telephoto lens to record car license platesThe CASA cameras seem to work great. I have 2 mounted in my window. One looks at the whole cul-de-sac and the other provides a greatly zoomed-in-view to record the license plate of every car that comes close to our house. Our mail was getting stolen, especially the outgoing mail that would sometimes contain a check. The Sheriff arrested the thief and recovered one of our stolen checks.The standard camera lens is around 4 mm in focal length. I removed this lens and affixed the camera to a flange that can be attached to old SLR lenses. For simplicity, you can glue the camera directly to lens at the right distance if you have only one lens. Old manual-focus SLR lenses can be found (Ebay, Craigslist, etc.) for $10 and up. I had a collection (19, 28, 50, 135, 75-205 mm) of these, now useless, Minolta MD lenses. The 28 and 50mm lenses can let yo see the license plate and other details (depends on how far your window is from the street). The magnifications are about 28/4= 7X or 50/4= 12.5X.The trickiest part was removing the original lens. (please refer to the pictures for this part). It could not be simply pulled off or unscrewed off. I had to cut the around the edge to separate the black front plate from the white compartment to access the lens. Although screwed in, there are two dabs of glue to hold it. I used a wire cutter to remove these glue dabs. Then it just screws right off (standard counter clockwise rotation). I glued the black cap back on and used machine screws of the right length to space the camera from the big lens. The spacing was determined by trial and error. The open area was later covered with foil to block stray light and keep dust out.The camera was around $18, so that would have been the cost of the experiment if it hadn’t work. But this simple project gives us the peace of mind that no one can come close to our home without our knowing their identity.I hope this was useful!

Picture quality is quite good. Simple setup. On my Android Razor+ 2023 it doesn’t close well using Google commands. I think a software upgrade from the manufacturer is needed.I don’t know why there is no looping with the SD card you have to reformat the SD card when it’s full. I assume it’s to get you to purchase yet another cloud service they have available. That doesn’t make me a loyal customer. Other than that good at this price point.