ZmodoPivot 1080p 360° Rotating Wireless Security Camera and All-in-One Smart Home Hub No Sensor Included

I purchased this along with 2 zmodo mini cams & 10 additional door/window sensors with the main reason being for home security. That being said, I understand that this wasn't entirely made for just security. I'm aware of how new the product and company are. There are a lot of things to like on the Pivot, but also several things that need improving.Setup is fairly painless and easy. I first downloaded the app on my iPhone & iPad. Then I plugged in the Pivot witting on top of my fireplace. And proceeded to stick the sensors on all doors and windows. The sensors can be slightly off, and don't have to line up perfectly. (In case you have a door frame that doesn't have a even surface with your door). I initially had trouble connecting the pivot to my wifi, but once I read the short tips/help section I changed some settings within my wifi network and got it working. (I'm not that computer literate and definitely have zero networking experience, in fact this was my first wifi I setup on my own in my house so even novices can get this connected by following the directions in the help section) once everything was connected and sensors paired it was up and running. Overall setup was pretty straight forward and I would say it's easy.Picture quality is decent but not great. The night vision is pretty good, but it's hard to tell details in faces especially from the far side of the room. The motion sensor is great, so sensitive that it kept alerting me in the middle of the night due to a moth flying around. Now the sound sensor can use some work. I get frequent alerts in the middle of the night due to loud cars or motorcycles passing by. There needs to be a sensitivity adjustment for both the sensors. My temperature sensor has only read 64 degrees and is malfunctioning. I will have to get a replacement unit. But everything else works good. The remote panning works good, but I would definitely like to see a zoom function especially if you are trying to capture their face. A digital zoom function would be a great help. Occasionally when motion is detected the Pivot will rotate a full 360 degrees for no reason. It isn't a big deal but I do notice it sometimes.Security: In order to be a true security system, there needs to be an alert when a sensor is triggered. I'm really hoping that there will be an external siren that you can connect. It needs one. In order for this to happen there needs to be an arm/disarm function. (Discussed below)When we are out of the house it's easy to check on the house and I love how I'll get a notification when a sensor is triggered. Of course this is all dependent that your power and wifi are working. A backup battery is necessary but is not an option for this product. I will say that I haven't had a single connection issue and it has been up and running continuously for almost 2 weeks. In fact, when I unplugged my router and moved it, and unplugged the pivot better hide the power cable the entire pivot system, sensors, and my 2 extra cameras all connected automatically within 2 minutes. So I am confident that in the event of a power outage the pivot will probably utomatically connect and be up and running without you being in the home. I say probably because I haven't had a power outage to test this.The zmodo app: Everything is controlled by this app. The app itself is pretty well laid out and easy to use. There isn't a lot of options so it would be hard to get confused I have many things that I want to see improvement on. First and foremost is the notifications. The notifications get annoying really quick when you are at home. The most basic of functions is a simple disarm and arm toggle/function. And the Pivot lacks this. In fact, I have to open the app, go into the settings, then click notifications, then turn it off. Then I have to do it AGAIN for the other two connected cameras. It literally takes me several minutes just to turn the notifications off when I'm home. It's easier to just silence my phone. And to make it worse, you have to do the same process to turn it back on, which is hard to remember when it takes 2-3 minutes to turn back on when you are rushing to leave.This brings us to the next issue, with all of those notifications going off every time you move in your house, the storage fills up quick. So I go into each camera, separately, and delete all the recorded events. Now, this sounds simple enough except you can only delete 10 events at a time. Not the whole cache. Really?? So another 5 minutes spent just deleting all the unnecessary notifications received every time you move in your house. Now, there is an option to set schedules for the notifications and cameras. But come on, how many people have an exact set Monday through Sunday schedule? This whole feature is useless as my families schedule changes on a week to week basis, as I'm sure most families do a simple arm/disarm function for ALL incorporated/connected products in one simple action. So when I'm home my notifications aren't going off on my phone, my iPad, and my MacBook all at the same time. It is incredibly annoying.Next is sharing. In order for you to setup say your spouse to receive notifications also, you can't just simply add a second phone number. You have to have your wife download the app and create her own account. Then you have to add her as a friend. The problem is my spouse did not want to make her own account. We should be able to have one account that notifies several phone numbers. I also wish this sent me a text message instead of just notifications. I feel I would be more conscious of a text alert versus a notification alert. You can only chose email or notifications, and not both. It's one or the other. That's a bummer. It would be nice to see a guest function also, say if you went out of town you could setup a friend to receive notifications while your away. You can do this, but your friend would have to create an account and be added.Overall the app is easy to use, but needs work. Seemless integration and controllable what it's lacking. Having to go to individual settings instead of a global settings is tedious.Home automation: There is none. Zwave compatible devices or something similar to control lights and things in the house would be a welcome upgrade.I will say, the customer service and tech support is amazing. Because of the customer service alone I haven't returned the product for a more refined competitor. The app has a built in live chat function, and even has posted operating hours, but I have been able to get a live chat person 24 hours a day. The last chat I made was 3am. And they answer quickly with minimal wait times, very minimal with my experience so far. They are positive and encourage feedback and suggestions. They also reassure me that the product is growing and firmware updates will continuously make it better. I believe them.The product itself is a solid product, it's well made and functions as supposed to. The app will hopefully continue to improve with better functions and control etc. I hope they first fix the notifications. Other than software improvements I would like to see an outdoor camera that can be connected to the pivot, an external siren for true home security, and some home automation features.I would recommend this product if you don't mind being a little patient as they refine their product. I purchased this solely for home security. To watch over my house when we aren't home. So far it's doing just that. Now if I could only turn the thing off when I'm home..

Zmodo Pivot 1080p Wireless Security Camera and All-in-One Smart Home Hub I got two of these devices. Overall I really like the product, and I think Zmodo is well capable of addressing the rough edges that are keeping me from giving it a 5-star review.The Good: Lots of it!- Camera is nice! I like both the normal images and the infrared images for their clarity. The viewing angle is a nice middle ground between too narrow and super-wide with fisheye like distortion.- App is decent, and functional. Sure it takes a bit of getting used to, and the UI model is kind of non-intutive, but once you get over the initial learning curve, its very functional.- Integration with the door sensors is nice. It was really easy to setup. From my perspective, this is a must-have functionality for these devices.- Calendar-based notification & camera schedule: I like the approach a lot. I don't think geo-fencing is better than a schedule-based approach -- they just solve different problems. Ideally I would like a schedule + a geo-fencing based arming solution. Why? I would like the camera to arm at night.The not-so-good: These are mostly app usability issues.- The sign-in can use either a phone number or email address, but devices can only be shared to accounts using email address with relative ease. I initially created my account using my phone number. After everything was setup, I tried to share the devices with my wife and daughter. No luck even though I had downloaded the Zmodo app on their phones. I should have noted down the exact details since I am getting a bit fuzzy on the things I tried. Sufficient to say that I had to switch all our app logins to our email addresses, and everything was good after that.- Multiple apps (Zmodo, Zsight, Zviewer) in the Android app store without clear description which is the right app to use. There is also the MeShare app, which is what the share link downloaded when I was trying to share while using phone numbers as login, and seems to do exactly the same thing as the zmodo app. I guess that one of them is just a re-skin of the other. BTW, Zmodo tech folks: Android does not like the security model for the MeShare app download from the text message. It required me to turn off the security protection, and while writing this review I remembered that I forgot to turn it back on afterwards. That's not good.- (FAQ) What is the 360 degree motion control, and how does the device act when I turn it off? Zmodo support provided the following link which answered my question: support.zmodo.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=45&id=138&artlang=en- Motion detection: There are lots of times where the motion detection did not trigger when I expected it to pick up off-camera motion.- UI: It is very functional once you get familiar with the app. Until then, use and learn :-) Just simple changes + training videos or docs to step initial users through the setup step for each functionality would make the app so much more usable. Also small teaks to the UI to make it more user friendly: slightly larger touch targets, buttons for the days in the scheduling UI, a line showing the current time and have the line go vertically through the 7 lines schedules set, etc. (Functionality before usability, right? No problem!)- Random errors during setup: Need the app to provide more insight on these errors. a) Camera schedule: Failed to add all the schedules I wanted to set. Update: The problem I ran into was due to a limit on the number of schedule events that can be set. It would be nice to get a more explicit error message. b) I also got stuck with the random errors while adding the door sensors. Not sure what happened, but I suspect that the app could not connect to zmodo servers for some reason. The problems had me scratching my head for a while. Eventually I logged out of the app, logged back in, and magically the problem was fixed. Just a bit more guidance in the app when encountering these problems would make the deployment a lot easier. c) Repeatable problems adding a preset for an accessory. Success feels like a hit-or-miss -- haven't been able to spot a pattern, but failures are frequent enough to be frustrating.- Free space report: The storage used report does not seem to change when I delete clips. One device stopped allowing me to get a live view. After a few hours of failing to connect, I deleted all the stored clips. The report did not change, but I was able to connect to the live view immediately after deleting the clips. Were the failure to link due to using up a bunch of the storage space? or just a co-incidence?Why I chose this over other similar products?- I like the ability to manually start recording of the video feed. The other product I was considering seriously does not offer that.- Local storage. I think these devices need both local and cloud storage. Cloud service can be added to the product for existing customers as the product evolves. Local storage -- no.- Integration with sensors. To me these sensors provide the most critical triggering events -- they are far more predictable than motion detection. I wouldn't buy a device that did not support at least door sensors.Customer support: Service related support has been fantastic. I got a bad door sensor. I got a response within a day of reporting it, and they are sending me two sensors to replace the bad one!Overall, they have done a great job with the device. My wife is not particularly tech-friendly, but after using the app with two current devices we have, she wants to add more coverage!Product folks at Zmodo: Keep improving the app usability! Add a cloud storage service.

This is a very nice security cam – easy setup and operation, simple friendly interface, good quality video, responsive support. However, I knocked off a star for the following reasons:1) Alert function went down when I was away and I did not realize it till later. I was able to restore the function with “remove device” and then “add device”. This was a simple procedure but the device should issue a warning in the event of a malfunction so it could be resolved without delay.2) It should be made to operate on both 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz removing the necessity to limit the cell phone to one band and make adjustments to modem settings. Support said they were working on this.3) Make the playback feature more useful. It should operate like a DVD player with variable speed forward and rewind controls. Then you would be able to watch the video as you scroll through at different speeds (normal, 2x, 3x, etc.).I have not had problems with oversensitivity that others have mentioned (Sunlight, etc.) although my pet does trigger alerts, which appears to be common to most security cams.I would rank this five stars if the above suggestions were implemented.

Works well ... one camera did go down on me and had to delete it and re-install ... Sometimes the recorded video is segmented (not choppy) ... Bought this to keep an eye on my 89 year old mother so that I could trouble shoot the lay of the house ... one time she fell and I tried to get the video to better understand what had happened so that it never happens again and it showed her standing one moment then the next on the ground ... Still can't figure out what happened ... but over all it's a very good unit ... (I have two) and probably would buy a third to pick up blind spots ...

Where to begin? Questionable setup instructions, takes its an inordinate amount of time to get recognized on your WiFi network. Took so long that I terminated it a couple of time. Finally just left it and the "ZMD_SAP" network appeared.Notifications are a real hit and miss on them being received if the app is closed. If apps is open it seems to provide a notification each time.Interval between successive motion detection is about 10 minutes to prevent nuisance notifications but it is not adjustable. Kind of useless in that regard if any sort of adjustments are necessary.Has a hard time with time zones when setting up. Screen display date/time differed from the actual selected time zone. Took several attempts of cycling thru different time zones and then ultimately back to the proper zone before the screen date/time stamp matched. It seems to hold once it finally figures it out.Not exactly true 2-way audio...an icon needs to be pressed on mobile device then released for other end to talk similar to a walkie-talkie. There is a noticeable lag in the audio. Speaker mute icon locked up in the mute state and I needed to reinstall the app to get it to release.Bluetooth speaker is very tin can like sound but I guess you're not buying this product for the music!Video quality is quite good.Accessory set up is very questionable. Instructions are very cryptic and it takes a deep dive into other aspects of the setup to actually figure it out. Found that once the door position switches were set up they worked as advertised.Temperature and humidity did not work right out of the box. Did the chat thing with tech support and the only thing they could advise it that it is most likely the surface the Pivot is sitting on, (could be but I don't think it's the actually 192 degrees in the house and 61% humidity). Their tech solution was to unplug for 3 hours so it could calibrate.....didn't work..go figure! When asked about warranty they response was a canned cut and paste out of some manual....send us all the paper work and we will evaluate the problem. Tech support then terminated the chat! Based on this it may be more trouble than its worth to return for somewhat of a useless feature.

I bought this to install in a vacation property. Some mixed reviews had me a little concerned but I found it to be very straight forward to setup. Total time from out of box to being able to view the room and control the camera via smartphone was maybe 30 minutes, including getting a glass of wine. Sent link to someone in another country to test out and it worked perfectly. The ability to swivel the camera nearly 360 degrees is great give the configuration of the space (a great room). Really like this product so far.

En general cumple con lo que promete, los pro son:Resolución: Es muy buena con un gran ángulo de visión que te permite visualizar una gran parte de lo que te interesa vigilar.Sensores trabajan muy bien y envían la señal muy rápido a tu celular para notificarte que se ha activado el sensor de puerta o ventana o según donde lo hayas instalado.App: es muy intuitiva y bien diseñada.Visión Nocturna: es de muy buena calidadGiro 360º: de gran utilidad y de respuesta rápida a los movimientos que le ordenes (depende de la velocidad de tu conexión a internet), el giro es horizontal y no vertical.Audio y Bluetooth: puedes escuchar tu música e interactuar por micrófono.Contra:Almacenamiento: es interno y aún no esta disponible para Nube, considero importante este elemento ya que si llegan a robar por lo menos tener el respaldo del video en nube es una gran ventaja.Bateria extra: si no se encuentra conectada a la luz o se va la luz, no tienes forma de ver nada.Sensibilidad de movimiento: muy baja, no detecta todo los movimientos (por ejemplo un perro de talla chica), después de un tiempo prolongando detecta el movimiento y te envía notificación pero nada más. En la app puedes configurar el área a cubrir pero no calibras la sensibilidad para que dependiendo de tus necesidades puedas mantenerte alerta.En general es un buen producto, pero tiene mejoras por hacer.