I was able to setup the camera on my home wifi network following the instructions that came in the box with very little trouble. It was when I tried to set up the camera for external viewing that I ran into issues. After giving it a go myself I caved and contacted customer service. I expected the worst and was actually completely blown away by their service. I emailed them just last night at 11pm and received an email back this morning. Gary setup an appointment with me tonight. You read that right, the same day, AND they work nights and weekends to accommodate their customers!! And he called me at the precise time that we agreed to. No offense to my Indian friends, but Gary is definitely American (as far as I can tell haha), is super nice, and is very patient. Within a half an hour, on the phone and with the screen sharing, he had everything working. THEN he sent me an email summarizing everything he showed me and all my settings. Are you kidding me? For the customer service alone, this company deserves more business! That is VERY rare these days. And the only reason I had trouble with setup was I was attempting to port forward on my Apple airport instead of my Verizon router. Otherwise the setup for everyone else should be a breeze. If not just contact Gary and experience what real customer service should be like (someone listening at Verizon, Comcast, AT&T...?), serious.As for the product, the camera works great, the night vision is very clear, and audio is very good. I have only used it on wifi for a few hours so we'll see how well it holds up. Baby isn't coming until January so I'll spy on the dog until then. I downloaded the baby monitor app on iPhone and iPad and they work great. Only wish the app were cheaper, but I'm fine with that.
What really sold me was the use of the wifi network, so no interference, and external viewing, because my parents are on the other side of the country. With everything finally setup the way I want it, I'm a very happy customer.
Oh, and you can always get a slight discount if you buy direct from their website by purchasing 2 wifi babies. I split it with my neighbor who is also pregnant. Highly recommend this product. That is all
I would have returned it, but it was given as a gift. Read the fine print before you purchase, WiFi Baby will not accept returns after 30 days. Unfortunately someone purchased this more than 30 days before gifting it to me, so I am stuck with it.
The product description is VERY MISLEADING if not completely false. First of all, the service you purchase only works from a PC or MAC. You must purchase the iPhone / iPad app separately. That's right, you are stuck in front of a desktop or must carry around a laptop unless you shell out a couple more dollars to buy a third-party piece of software to use with your smart phone. The 'anywhere' access is misleading. They require you to use a third party DDNS service, which they do not own or support. You can choose to use free DDNS hosting sites, which may not have any guaranteed reliability, or pay again for another service.
You are looking at $250 for the WiFI baby (which is really just a $150 Y-Cam with the WiFi Baby logo on it), plus ~$60 for the network extender since the camera has such limited range, plus $12 for the app to use your smart phone, plus way too much time configuring and debugging your network config, plus a couple of calls to your ISP to make sure they will allow DDNS and port forwarding to work, which all adds to one humongous waste of time since you still don't have a working video monitor at the end of it.
Update:
After several more hours of testing, I am able to get a connection on an iPad about 75% of the time and about 25% of the time on an iPhone. I am trying to contact the software vendor to diagnose the issue since WiFi Baby tech support will not respond to me anymore.
I have since contacted Tech Support with online 'tickets' about 5 times and no one will respond to me. After many calls, I was able to finally speak to a person, who told me my only option was to submit help tickets online and didn't really care that no one had responded to my requests for 2 weeks. I have found that manually powering off and re-powering the camera sometimes solves the connection issues, but it is aggravating to have to walk to the baby's room to fix the camera so you can monitor the baby...
The camera picture is high quality and the night vision feature is really quite good. However, the sound is terrible. My camera produces an awful grating sound, not white noise, when there is no ambient sound.Sometimes you come across a brand experience that was just so amazing, you have to tell people about. For me, that experience came this weekend from an unlikely place a baby monitor manufacturer.
One of my tasks on my to do list was to set up our two newly purchased baby monitors at the house. Being the geek that I am, we had purchased cameras from WiFi Baby that would be viewable on the iPhone, iPad and Android. Initial set-up was a breeze but I ended up running into some pretty technical problems with the dynamic IP's on the cameras. After wasting a few hours trying to solve it myself, I decided to drop an email to WiFi Baby to see if they would be able to help.
Since their website clearly said that customer service was only available during the weekday, I didn't expect to hear anything from them till Monday. But in the first of many pleasant surprises, it only took them about 30 minutes to get a response on Saturday afternoon from Gary, the WiFi Baby Technical Supervisor. While the speed of response was impressive, its really what came next that set WiFi Baby apart. In their email back to me, Gary offered to set up a time over the weekend at any point that I would be available. Once we had a time, he followed up with a simple program to install for screen sharing so he can help me with the problem I was facing.
Once the appointed time rolled around, Gary called my cell phone and we got to work. He immediately took the control of my computer and walked me step by step through everything that needed done. It took about 15 minutes and everything was running perfectly. He even tweaked a few of the settings on the camera that would make for a better experience (changing the date stamp and fixing the lighting). If that wasn't enough, he even helped me get the app set up on my iPhone, which was impressive since it was third party software. Almost any other company would have claimed to not be able to help due to it not being their program. But WiFi Baby recognized that customer service was the ultimate goal and that meant helping at each step of the process. And I almost forgot the best part. Gary followed up about 30 minutes after our call with an email detailing every single step he took so I could fix it myself at a later date. And it wasn't just a generic note but a detailed email with every personalized step. Wow.
Everyone knows of the great customer service from companies like Zappos or Apple. But it is really amazing when you have a chance to run across equally stellar service from a small business. WiFi Baby clearly recognizes the value of going above and beyond for their customers. Needless to say, they have won me over as a loyal customer.This product is AWESOME! It's exactly what we hoped it would be. For a moment after we'd set it up, I was a little concerned it wasn't going to work like I'd thought though. Thankfully they have amazing free phone tech support. Anyways, here are what I consider to be the most important things to know about Baby Wifi:
1. Great camera quality (both daytime, night vision, etc.)
2. Great sound quality.
3. Camera looks to be well-built, is attractive, and low profile.
4. It's pretty easy to set up yourself for indoor wifi-only use (if you're somewhat tech savvy and know how to follow instructions).
5. You'll need to download a separate iPhone/iPad/Android app to use on your mobile device. We purchased the one Baby Wifi recommends called Baby Monitor HD by Sunshine Apps. It cost another $11.99 for each device.
6. It works with 3G/4G networks as well when you cannot be on your wifi network. This was the BIGGEST selling point for us, but this was precisely what we couldn't figure out how to set up on our own and was our reason to call tech support. It turns out you need to go through some additional steps to have a static IP address for the "Away" mode on the app to use this feature. This was a bit over our heads, and so I was very thankful for Gary's help (our phone technician).
As a last note (directed more to the people at Wifi Baby), the Wifi Baby website should probably be updated in several places that relate to setting up the Baby Monitor app. I found a few places where links, instructions and tutorial videos didn't make sense because the Baby Monitor HD app must have had a new release recently. Although I completely understand that this is a small growing business and they're just trying to keep pace! Anyways....can't fault them though...again b/c the customer service was phenomenal!!I have been using the ycam along with the Baby monitor app for about two weeks now. Getting it setup was alittle tricky so I finally gave in and submitted a help ticket on the babywifi website. I was able to setup an appointment that same evening. This item is basically a ycam with in packaging from wifi baby. But the extra $50 is totally worth having someone set it up for you step by step. Gary from wifi baby is awesome. There is about a 4 second delay in the sound. But otherwise pretty good. I have it setup on both my husband and my iphones, an itouch, and have the website viewing bookmarked on our laptop. Yes it is a little annoying that you have to pay for the Baby monitor app separately. The app running continuously drains your battery so you have to just keep the phone or itouch plugged in at night. But at least I know with this camera system there are no random strangers that can pick up images of my child in his crib like a monitoring system that uses radio frequencies. Over I have had a great experience with this product.
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