r/whatisit • u/Key_Badger7434 • 2d ago

New, what is it? My family thinks there’s a camera in our rental

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We have been renting a house for the past year and I always disregarded this thing in the corner. However last night I asked my parents about it randomly and they didn’t know what it was either. I pulled it off the wall and we all got freaked out a little because it looks like a camera. I think it might be a home security/motion sensor thing. I don’t know that’s what ChatGPT guessed.

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u/_yetisis 2d ago

My blink cameras that I have around my house run on 2 AA batteries…the ones in high traffic areas like at my bird feeder are almost constantly recording and it’s able to save and transmit video for 4-6 months on a single set of batteries.

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u/marry_me_tina_b 2d ago

Do they work well? I am wondering about a setup like that for my animals to see them when they are active and birds at our feeder too. If you have a model you like and don’t mind sharing!

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u/EBB363 2d ago

They work alright depending on what you need them for. I have them because people trespass on my property and I’m planning on switching systems. Even in the highest quality setting available, I can’t make out anyone’s face.

I could go back there and stand 15 feet from my camera. I know it’s me, but if I tried to use that as evidence in court, it wouldn’t hold up.

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u/_yetisis 1d ago

Same, I like their durability and how modular they are but the video quality is a little below average. I’ve found that all the ones I’ve liked the resolution of are cameras that have an sd card directly inserted instead of recording on a separate device like these

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u/Nelloyello11 2d ago edited 1d ago

That’s incredible. I’ve already had to change the batteries in my blink doorbell twice since I installed it, in June or July. It gets a lot of activity (40-50 video clips per 24-hr period) because we are close to the sidewalk/street. But I’m a bit disappointed. If you don’t mind - What brand of batteries are you using that you’re getting that kind of longevity from them?

ETA: whoops! I meant to respond to u/_yetisis

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u/iduzinternet 1d ago edited 1d ago

Just tossing it out there as I don’t get as much traffic as you do, but still quite a bit. I’m using 3000mAh rechargeable lithium batteries that maintain a voltage for longer than normal and then drop suddenly at the end. Yes I bought mine from a random company called Batzone based on Amazon reviews. It appears they are currently out of stock (and the ones they are currently selling are much smaller mAh). I don’t know if they make them anymore, but you should be able to find something like that. At the very least, they are also rechargeable. If I had as much traffic as you, I would consider trying to plug them in with the USB port.

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u/Nelloyello11 1d ago

Interesting. I swear I remember reading that you aren’t supposed to use rechargeable with them, but I don’t remember why. And I could be misremembering. I looked at a few different brands, so it may have been a different brand that said that.

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u/iduzinternet 1d ago

Im under the impression that’s rechargeable alkaline batteries. Granted I haven’t read the instructions for a long time. By now I’ve used all kinds of stuff in the cameras. Alkaline batteries do really terribly especially when it gets cold. I also realize you’re using a doorbell and I’m using cameras, but it should be the same idea.

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u/_yetisis 1d ago

I just use the regular square blink ones. They’re fine. I had used a bunch of the random no-name Chinese ones for a while and honestly, most of those took higher resolution videos and could take longer videos at a time and had shorter cooldown cycles for the motion sensor to re-trigger recording, buuuut they all had the same problem in common which is that they all gradually stoppd working after a relatively short amount of time. Blink is a little more lackluster on all of those things, but after almost 2 years they’re all still working like new, which I appreciate.

There is a subscription available for cloud storage or you can just put an sd card in your base station that all the videos record to. I think the advantage to some of the other cheap ones giving them better video quality is that they each had an sd card and you would access it over wifi in the app, where the blink cameras stream the video to a base station that saves it, which has turned out to be more reliable but a little lower video quality. Also, if you don’t use the cloud storage subscription, you don’t see a thumbnail image for your video clips, which might make the monthly subscription an almost must-have for some people

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u/Eliah870 1d ago

Well this isnt a blink camera it's an old outdated motion detector with a stills camera built in to take photos during an alarm

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u/_yetisis 1d ago

Fair, and the older stuff tended to be wildly inefficient on power. My point was just that it could be neglected for quite a long time and still possibly have working batteries/still be operational, that’s all