You Can Do More Than MyQ Smart Garage Security Camera
I have a list of features I prefer in a home camera: small size, long cords, ability to turn off indicator lights, remote pan and tilt capability, decent night vision and zoom. There are a few brands that already do this pretty decently: Blink, which has a relatively inexpensive indoor pan/tilt system for $39.99; Wyze, which has better pan and tilt performance for $31.90 (if you can get past the security issues ); and even PetCube, which has a 360° camera for $10.49. A new indoor camera should raise the bar set by these cameras, and I don’t think the new myQ Smart Garage Security Camera ($29.99) from Chamberlain, known for its garage door openers, will do that. Although it works fine, you can get better functionality from other cameras for this price. Even if you have myQ products and want to stay in the ecosystem, Chamberlain has enough hub integrations to make the process fairly easy with other camera brands.
Easy to spot
The garage security camera is a lightweight, stationary, one-piece camera with a four-by-four-inch bezel. The built-in stand can be used upside down or upside down. Setup was fairly simple: the camera connected easily via Bluetooth via the myQ app, and then you could set it up by either standing it somewhere or hanging it up. The base is equipped with a magnet so it can be easily attached to your refrigerator or garage engine.
While it’s not really any different from any indoor camera, myQ advertises it as ideal for hanging upside down from your garage door motor so you can see whether the garage is open or not, see what’s going on in your garage, and even communicate with people through camera. . Even though the camera has a 130-degree field of view, it is stationary, so in this case more than half of the garage is out of view—it’s easy to avoid being filmed. This camera is also easy to spot – it’s big enough that it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Chamberlain uses much of the camera for Amazon’s Key In Garage Delivery program. This allows Amazon to open your garage, deliver your items while you watch the camera, and then close the garage for an additional $1.99 delivery fee. The requirement for inclusion in the program is “smart garage”, not “smart camera”, and other smart cameras like Ring are included in the program, so I don’t consider this a unique feature of the myQ camera.
Stay informed about subscription costs
The myQ app allows you to set the same options you see on most cameras: zones to ignore, sensitivity levels, notifications. The video delivered is as good as any other 1080p camera I’ve tried, but after the 30-day free trial ends, a subscription is required if you want to keep any of these videos—plans start at $3.99 per month. which is not bad. compared to the competition, but Eufy offers a nearly identical camera for $28.97 that you can add to your Eufy Homebase drive, so you don’t need a subscription at all. Blink cameras also have the option to use local storage.
Static camera means many areas are out of view
This camera made me realize how often I use the pan and tilt options remotely to adjust my view. Unless you mount the camera in the corner of the ceiling, it’s unlikely you’ll get a full view of the room, and you’ll probably want to zoom in and scan the space as you watch the live video. My Wyze camera, for example, actually follows activity on its own, rotating to always keep the activity in focus. I often started live video from myQ and everything I wanted to watch was out of range, but I couldn’t do anything about it remotely.
Annoying glitches when updating software
My second problem was the clicking sound. myQ cameras are updated at night, at exactly 23:00. I know because my camera started clicking, flashing lights every night at 11:00 pm and didn’t stop. The app told me that the camera was updating, but it never finished. I finally turned off the camera out of frustration. MyQ even sent me a new camera that had the same problem. Unplugging and turning the cameras on and off a few times eventually solves the problem, but it’s more work than I’m willing to take on.
There are better cameras for this price
In every scenario I tried to imagine with this large stationary camera, I simply couldn’t think of a reason why a smaller pan and tilt mechanism wouldn’t be better. Attached to the garage door motor, a 360-degree camera can capture everything in the room and be high enough to be difficult to reach. For that price, you can buy a small, subscription-free tilt and turn mechanism and use automation to link it to your smart garage opener.