3 Ways to Keep an Eye on Your Living Room from Anywhere with Internet

Sure, you can use the wonders of web-based video calling to speak to the parents back east, but its potential goes way beyond that. How about using it to keep watch on your home while you're at the office or out of town altogether?

It's not as difficult as you might think and as usual there are a number of alternative approaches to match your budget and current level of tech-savviness. As long as there's Wi-Fi at your home, you can set up a camera to keep watch on what's happening.

With iSmartAlarm

 

If you really want to go all out on your living room monitoring kit, and there's a home security fund burning a hole in your wallet, then iSmartAlarm is just about as comprehensive as they come. An intelligent security camera is just one part of this extensive system, which covers everything from alerts when family members get home, to timers for your lights so you can pretend to be at home when you aren't. This is a solution that doesn't come cheap though, particularly if you want all of the components.

We're here for the video surveillance, which comes in the form of the chunky iCamera Keep. It doesn't look like the world's most modern bit of kit but what it lacks in form it makes up for in function. You can pan and tilt the camera right from your phone and take snaps manually as well as relying on the automatic motion detectors to do the job for you. A separate CubeOne box (which acts as the brains for your whole iSmartAlarm system) can record video footage while you're away for you to review at a later date.

There's a bunch of compatible stuff you can add to the camera from iSmartAlarm: Contact sensors so you know when doors are being opened, smart switches for turning appliances on and off, motion sensors for detecting movement in a particular area, and so on, with everything controlled from your Android or iOS smartphone. Prices start at $199 and go upwards from there, but there's no subscription to pay—all the costs are up front. If you're looking for a comparable alternative then Honeywell has a broad range of home security kit as well.

With a Nest Cam or Canary

 

A step down from a full-on security system but still a dedicated solution with plenty of bells and whistles, the $199 Nest Cam is one of Google's latest hardware projects — it's the one to go for if you just want the video feed functionality without all of the other home security add-ons and features rolled into the package. It looks a bit like an old-school webcam but it connects directly to the web and can pipe video to you wherever you are, and it has some useful features like a night vision mode.

That's just for starters: If you chip in a few more dollars a month you can add recordings that are stored in the cloud for 10 days ($10/month) or 30 days ($30/month). With the Nest Cam alone, you only get a live feed plus alerts when the camera detects something happening—Nest Aware (as the extra premium service is called) adds a summary of the day's incidents, an archive of footage, the ability to set activity zones and a timelapse mode for burning through a lot of video very quickly. You can also set up subscriptions for multiple cameras.

You get a month of free Nest Aware when you buy a Nest Cam. It can be left free-standing or fixed to a wall or fridge (there's a built-in magnet) and the camera lens records in 1080p HD quality with a 130-degree wide angle view. As you would expect, it works pretty seamlessly with Google's other Nest products too. If you want a robust and professional system for watching your living room from anywhere (via web, iOS or Android), but don't want to pay full whack, Nest Cam is worth a look. 

And if the subscription turns you off, you can also check out Canary, it's a little bulkier, but for the same $200 it performs all of the important features the Nest does, but comes with motion alerts and limited cloud storage for no extra fee.

With Skype and a webcam

 

 

Skype has a little-known feature that lets you connect remotely from another computer, with no input necessary from your home machine. The beauty of this one is you don't need any extra equipment if you already have a PC (or laptop) at home with a webcam—Skype is free to download and use as well, so you can get started pretty much straight away without spending anything.

Open up Skype on Windows and get to the Options dialog via the Tools menu (it's under Skype and Preferences on a Mac). If you click Calls, then Show advanced options, you should see a box labelled Answer incoming calls automatically—tick this box and choose to start your video feed automatically too. Any incoming Skype calls will automatically get put straight through to your video feed, giving you a glimpse of your living room, pets and everything else at home.

You've probably spotted a potential flaw here: Your Skype contacts video calling you when you're away. To get around this you need to set up a new Skype account solely for the purpose of watching your home, then add your original Skype account as the one and only contact. In the same dialog as the auto-accept setting you can make sure you're only receiving calls from confirmed contacts.

You can then tap into the video feed from wherever you can get Skype: Your smartphone, an Internet cafe, a browser on the other side of the world, or anywhere else.

In theory there's nothing to stop you setting up single-purpose Skype accounts for every computer (and room) in your house, and with webcams costing very little you could feed one to the window to keep check on the garden too. On the downside, your various machines have to stay on all the time, waiting for your call.

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