We are two developers from Toronto who couldn't find a decent and cheap solution to monitor our kids/pets through the browser. We originally started this project because we thought it would be a great opportunity to learn and build something that could be useful to us. As we dove deeper we realized that perhaps others would find it useful as well, so we turned it into a product.<p>We decided to take a web first approach rather than a mobile app first approach for a few reasons:<p>1) We are web developers so it's what we know
2) Web browsers are ubiquitous, meaning users could still access our app on mobile devices via browser or PWA (more on that later)
3) People spend the majority of their time on computers, whether for work, study, or leisure. So it makes sense to us to be able to easily monitor from your computer.
4) We think the web is cool (See reason 1)<p>Our goals were to:
1) Make it possible for anyone to sign up and create a security camera
2) Not require any hardware purchase
3) Not require any application install
4) Put our old devices to good use rather than end up in land fills!<p>We wanted to make UView available as a mobile app as well so we converted it into a mobile app by turning it into a PWA (Progressive Web App). You can install it on Android using the install button, however iOS users will have to select the “Add to home screen” button in the browser.<p>We would appreciate any comments and feedback!
There's a combination of overselling and vagueness on the site that add up to an <i>appearance</i> of sketchiness that you were probably hoping to avoid. Couple of things that poked me in the eye:<p>If you have a trial and a real sub, calling the sub 'Pro' sounds silly and unserious, as does saying it has 'priority' support. Priority over what?<p>There's a lot of talk about privacy being important but the most important question - does the service have access to my video feeds, does it store them, for how long, etc, is not answered straightforwardly anywhere that I saw. Saying things like 'highly encrypted' is a slightly chiller version of the old 'military-grade encryption' and equally uninformative.<p>The privacy policy is vague and offers no notification of changes while at the same time assuring you your email address can be used for promotion.<p>I realize a lot of this stuff comes from standard-ish templates but if you're selling something mildly sensitive you probably want to go through the materials with a fine-toothed comb for details and tone.
This is slick, although I think you might have more luck with a pricing model like <a href="https://alfred.camera" rel="nofollow">https://alfred.camera</a> (turns any smartphone into a security/pet/baby camera), i.e. unlimited free use but a subscription required for HD viewing, recording, and unlimited device count. I was all set to try it out to supplement my current setup (and likely convert to a subscribing customer) but I tend to be turned off by trials.
The pricing on this is tough. Wyze cameras are $20, whereas this is $5/mo. If I anticipate having an ongoing need, I'll just by a Wyze camera (which also has infrared). Just my 2¢, as a guy who has wondered about whether a service like this existed in the past. Maybe consider offering a lower tier ($10/annually?) for just one camera?
This is actually exactly what I was looking for a couple months ago. Would be great if there was some feature to automatically record movement, didn't see it on the site. Not sure about the security section though<p>> All of our services are managed in-house bringing you maximum privacy.<p>Having the services managed in house actually gives me less confidence, since uview has no reputation associated with it. I would be more convinced with some kind of explanation of how the video connection is made secure - what kind of encryption is there, what keeps uview from just spying on my video feed (I suspect not much but don't really know), etc.
FYI, noticed a typo in the "Features" section<p>> <i>Get notified when something movement is detected on your video feed.</i><p>Probably want to remove the word "something"<p>Also, the super light colored "Available on supported Android devices" seems like a recipe for pissed off customers. If it's something I care enough about to prevent me from signing up then it's not like I'll notice it later and say "oh well, what a great service." I'm just going to be mad. Feels very deceptive.
You got a good product with a decent market size, skip the free trail, and start selling, help people set it up if needed. Dont add more features until you have a bunch of customers and know your market. Make it possible for customers to create view links so that your customers will help you get more customers.
Do you have any recommendation for minimum sys requirements of hardware to effectively run this full-time? Considering the number of old Android mobiles I have sitting around gathering dust, this is a great idea to tinker with.<p>BTW your verification email is landing up in spam in Gmail.
I feel like this has the potential to be misused unless it is clear when the device is in camera mode. I haven’t installed this so I’m admittedly unqualified to comment on whether that’s true, but please don’t give people a DIY NSA capability
Only as a note, I tried your site on an (admittedly old, deprecated and what not) XP laptop and couldn't even load your site.<p>Tried with Opera, Chrome (Iron browser) and QTweb.<p>I can get to it with Basilisk (which is an experimental, modded and alpha/beta level browser derived from Firefox).<p>I believe that you should provide:<p>1) a "simplified" site accessible with <i>any</i> (including old) browsers/OS<p>2) a list of the browsers/OS's actually tested and working with the service<p>Right now, it seems to me that most of the (cheap as myself) people interested in re-using old (even very old) hardware they have handy as per your main points are cut out.
I had the same idea, but for human detection with the free Yolo. As most of security is about detecting humans where they shouldn't be. Simple motion detection is nearly useless - any cat or a bird will trigger it, or even branches moving in the wind.
This looks really cool! The notifications for movement detected is a plus but is there any way to customize that in a way that notifications wouldn't get pushed every time the cat decides to jump up on the couch?
I just get a "The camera has failed to load" message, and the link to the "Please see our faq for reasons why" is just a link to the homepage, not any faq.
I would consider using this, but I'd likely only use it for 1 camera, as such $5 a month is untenable. You should consider a lower tier payment option.