I’ve been looking to replace my existing security camera system for a while now. I had cameras installed around the outside of the house and 1 in the garage when I first moved in. They are all coax runs, and are powered by the coax connection. Everything worked great until last year.

First, I stopped being able to use the app on my phone to view the cameras. Just flat out told me my 2 year old Pixel 6 was no longer supported?! It also no longer worked in the Firefox browser, which caused a brief panic of thinking the control/DVR box they plug into had crapped out. Nope, I just needed to use Chrome/Brave browser instead and it worked.

The system is Dahua, which is made in China and has been revealed to have back doors into the camera system. There’s a firmware patch, but having already suffered one ransomware attack on my previous NAS system, plus needing to be super cautious since I work from home, I really don’t want to deal with this thing anymore. I would love to replace the existing system with something from Ubiquiti, but that would cost around 1k. Much more than I want to spend!

I’ve found my replacements and have saved a lot during Amazon’s big spring sale right now. After some research I decided on the TAPO camera line. No cloud subscription required, you can load them with Micro SD cards to store recordings. They also have solar powered cameras to charge their internal battery, so no additional power runs are required. If you lose power, these things will keep going. If you have no Wi-Fi, these things will keep recording to the Micro SD card. Already a huge improvement over my existing system!

Cameras purchased:

• Indoor Camera – $25: Using in the garage and in the guest room where the pups hang out (so I can keep an eye on them).
• Solar Powered Outdoor Camera – $39.99/$44.99: I’ve got 2 set up in the backyard to monitor the pups and the gates, and I’ll mount 3 on the outside of my house up front. (White is cheaper than black).
• Extreme temperature Micro SD Cards: Range in size from 128 GB for $16.49 to 2TB for $199.

I also bought this Bird Feeder pole to mount the cameras in the backyard: https://a.co/d/3x53pw5. Works great and I can put the cameras wherever I want to get the best coverage, plus make sure enough sun gets to the solar panel. May look a little silly, but it’s in the backyard, no one will see them. Honestly, I just really didn’t want to figure out how to hang these things on vinyl fencing. (I also don’t know which side of the property line these fences were installed on or who truly “owns” them.)

View from the camera:

Sale ends tomorrow. These cameras will also record sound, and you can speak through them if needed. Don’t know if I really care about that last point, but it’s a “nice to have”.

Besides getting this item checked off my “to do” list, I also rebuilt my media PC for streaming my movie collection. It’s been running for about 4-5 years now and had gotten really sluggish. Took most of yesterday, but it’s done! Still enjoying the Jellyfin software that works with Roku for streaming.

Future project will be to replace my Amazon Echo devices with no-microphone-on-board speakers that can stream from Jellyfin and my online Pandora account. It was going to be Sonos, but they’ve stopped making speakers without microphones. I’ll probably go with Denon, but this is going to be an expensive upgrade to get 4 of them. Fingers crossed they have a big sale!