Y-cam Smart Security Systems

Hi! It's Scott Priddey from SAFGas Limited. I'm a founding member of Experts Trades and this is a video review for Expert Trades' Tooltalk on the Y-cam product. So far, I've got interested in being a reseller for Y-cam and from the day I ordered it, it came the following day, and it was in a package that is here. Some week or so later, it's still not opened, so I'm about to get into it and set it all up and do a quick run-through of how easy or hard it is for me to set it all up. I've included some screen shots of the emails and text messages that we got after we placed the order for the evaluation kit so you're kept in the loop via DPD. You can see exactly where it is and exactly where it's coming. So, right from the outset, I've been impressed. Let's get into the product to have a look.

So, you can see that I've opened the box and in the box, we've got a Y-Cam Protect Outdoor Camera, a Y-cam Protect Indoor Camera, a Y-Cam Protect Outdoor Siren and a Y-cam Protect Home Security System.

The first thing I'm going to do is go to the app store or Google Playstore and download the Y-cam app.

Well-packaged.

Straightaway I think that's a good point. It's a solar outdoor siren. It would always have power.

Downloading the app is easy. I put in my name, email address, phone number, create a password, and then it's talking me through so far what to do. It actually tells you--I don't know if you can see that--but it actually tells you there to plug your hub- Oh, I'm sorry I've selected the Protect Alarm to set up first and it's telling me to plug my hub into a power cable. There's about five points in there to follow so I'm going to just follow it through the app as it says.

All nice-packaged. A good nice feel about everything. So, I very quickly set up the Protect hub, plugged the ethernet cable in, 240-volt cable in, green light came on, and then I connected a door remote sensor, which is two magnet- I'll show you on over the align, to offset an access sensor which is basically a PIR passive inter-radar thing. I'll put that in the back of my work van and opposite of the remote which I can't find- There it is. You just type in the number on the back of each of the sensors or the remote and it pass it. It's done in minutes so the next thing I'm going to have to go out now is the outdoor camera.

So yeah, we're done, we're set up. Really easy to set up, really easy to follow in the app. I'll just do a quick tour around of what I've done and why I've done it.

I just put the siren there because it will get the sun all day. We've got the indoor camera looking down the garden, which is looking a bit poor at the moment. You can't hardly see it but I've put there the door sensor stuck there, which is battery-powered.

I've actually stuck the PIR or the motion sensor in the back of my work van. Finally, I've actually, for now I know it's not going to be perhaps the best with the reflection through the window, but I've just set up the outside camera. That's the inside, looking down on my drive, looking down at the cars in the drive and the van. The reason for this is that I'm just about to go away for the weekend.

So, as I mentioned earlier, right from the outset, I think Y-cam has got this sorted. I've done my research on them. They've been established since 2007. So, well-established firm. They're obviously making a great use of IT and this fits the situation where, in my house for somebody with no knowledge of setting anything like this up before. We've got a lot of cars being stolen on the estate at the moment. We had four cars in one night reported on one of the Facebook groups the other day. So, this was really, really crucial for me to get these sorted and set-up quickly before I go away on holiday, which is what I've done.

I'm now going to be away and I'm able to monitor what's going on in my garden and in my drive. If anybody breaks in the back door there's a sensor there. If anybody breaks in the side door of the van, there's a sensor in there. So, I'm going to be going away on holiday now and with a bit more peace of mind. Thanks Y-cam for a brilliant service, making it so easy to set-up. The app is really, really easy to follow as I say, even for me. To tell you, I'll give it a go while I'm away and I'll be back after my holiday. Thank you very much. It's Scott Pridey doing the Expert Trades talk to our review for Y-cam.

Hi! As you know from my intro, I set-up the Y-cam system just before I came on holiday and I'm just kind of trying to remember as many features that I've used since I've been away. I have two devices. I have an Android phone for my personal use and I have an Apple phone for my business. I've got the app on both phones and I must say, the features on or the way you use the app on both phones and the alerts that you get on both platforms is pretty much the same.

Some of the features are alike. I've come with a plus system, so I've had one alert that Y-cam was now using the SIM. So, obviously that meant there was a problem with my internet wi-fi at home. It automatically switched over to the SIM and it notified me. Notifications referring back to my Apple device here, but in Settings, you can choose what notifications that you get. The signal is not brilliant here so I have to go into a particular place to get a signal. But you can have Alert Notification type. You can have Email. You can have Push, which is just like a text message notification from the app. That's all Off selected. You can have Both or you can have Off. So, I've chose to get push notifications and when the internet at home, the wi-fi, is down, I've had a push notification to tell me, switched over automatically to SIM so it's constantly monitoring the system for the cameras.

Motion recording, I've had a good play with that because there's a setting called Motion Zone Setting. If you select that, you can actually pick the size of the area that you want the motion to be recording. The indoor camera that I've got pointed out to the garden was picking up the bushes waving from next door into our garden. I just reduced the area slightly and it stopped me getting so many push notifications. I mean, you can tell when you've got a problem because the push notifications is between 20 and 45 seconds of notice. When you have a look on your phone, if the list is a minimal amount of time, then you haven't got to worry.

When you do have to worry is when your friend turns up to your house, set with a key to our house and he's forgot the alarm code for- So, yeah, when he gets to the house and I've got a long time span and he's wandering around in the drive and I can see him on the phone. He's wondering what's going on because he set the alarm up. Because he's come back to our house to pick up his tools for a job he's got tomorrow. That was quite useful, because I picked up a notification and I said to my girls that Cookie's going to ring me any minute now because I could see he was on his phone and phoning me. That was quite amusing. The camera over the drive picked him up. The camera in the garden picked him up. The quality is absolutely brilliant and there's nothing bad I could say about that.

Coming back to motion zone setting, you can actually pick, you can choose the area, top and bottom, of what it's recording, or the area that it's recording. I've reduced that, as I say, and it's stopped picking up the bushes in next door's garden.

I'm probably going on too long here, but I just wanted to check in and let you know that since I've been away, it's just really easy to use.

What else? What else? On the drive, I was able to reduce the area as well. Although it's showing a large area onto the footpath, I've reduced the area of the motion recording just to the drive area. So I could see that the post lady came on Friday, that we didn't have any post on Saturday. Obviously, it's Sunday now, so we didn't have any post, Sunday. And yes, so far, really good. Just want a quick five-minute check-in so far on a holiday. Thank you.

In fact, when my mate turned up this afternoon, he was returning to my house to pick up some tools knowing that I wasn't there. He's got the key to the house so he went in. He got a van key and he went in my van to get a couple of things out of the van. Then, he knew where he put them in my van and he set the alarm off with the PIR or the motion sensor.

I got an alert for that, to start with. Then when he went into the house, he was panicking, so he opened the back door where I've got an access sensor, as we know, and he sat there. That obviously set the alarm off. I got another alert. I was able to watch him walking around the drive in a panic on the camera that was monitoring the drive, until he phoned me to find out what was going on. I just disarmed it from my phone straightaway, no problem. Didn't have to reset it or anything, but it just proves it the whole system works. When my friend had gone, I just armed the system again. Once he finished getting all his tools and things.

Hello I'm Andrew Tyler. This is a Tool Talk review for Expert Trades on the Y Cam Security System.
I've got it, so I've actually installed it, but first of all I'll just show you how it all turns up in lovely packaging, very professionally packaged. You've got the solar siren in this box here. There's another little box here for the indoor camera. You've got the protect alarms, that is the sensors, and then the outdoor camera. All very good. All come in a big box, all safely packed and look very nice. That's these boxes.
I'll show you what I've done. I haven't actually installed it the way that they probably wanted it installed. I've used it for a van security system instead of a house security system. A bit of a hybrid 'cause I have got bits of it in the house too. I use, for the van, I've got one of the PIR sensors in the van, so if the back door opens, the house alarm goes off. And you can deactivate it by the key, the key fob. Also, I put the outside camera on it, but then I used the inside camera ... I did actually have the inside camera in the van, but it would eventually obviously drain the battery. There are ways round it. You can get a little solar panel with an extra battery, but it doesn't need it. The PIR on its own is awesome. The siren on the house is so loud, blue flashing light, it's going to scare anybody off as soon as they've opened that door. And yeah, so I use the indoor camera just for a nanny cam, that's good enough. The wife can use it for that.
And yeah, pretty much it's easy 'cause you just add to it. It's got the door sensors, which are in this picture here. This is the key fob, and that's the PIR sensor. And it's literally got a double-sided sticky tab and you can just ‘waz’ it in the van anywhere, shut it all up, so then as soon as that door opens, you can see. You can have it set to go immediately off or I've got 10 seconds. Hopefully they haven't nicked everything in 10 seconds, but then the camera's on it and the siren will go off. And you get a notification as well on your phone, so that will beep as well. Also, the actual hub itself, that starts beeping and going off like an alarm, so you are alerted three different ways. And I think it's fantastic. I think that they should market it more for the vans. Well, not more for the vans, but that as a separate package. Say, "Look. There's a van sensor, hook it into the house."
So yeah, really good. I'll do some other videos that you can see what I've done. I actually do like the product. I fit a lot of Nest products and I thought that this wouldn't hold up to it, but it does. Yeah, it hasn't got the same ... It's not 1080, but you wouldn't even know it wasn't, to be totally honest. And it's got the Cloud storage is what's, for me, what's really good. So you get the seven days for a year and yeah, the price is so cheap. It seems like it's a budget camera, but it's not really. The quality is really good, but it is low in price. So then when you want to keep adding stuff it's not dear at all. And I'm probably going to end up with a few more cameras and probably end up getting the sensors on all the doors downstairs. But so far, so good. And I've had it maybe two weeks now and you can tell in two weeks if you like a product and if it's going to work for you, and it does.
I also have Nest cameras in my house. I have Swan cameras in my house too. So I have a few, I have all sorts. I've got the Nest doorbell and all that. So I've got good comparisons. And for the money, this is a good product and the customer support 'cause classic, I fit this sort of thing all the time, I've just jumped straight in and there is something you need to know with the outdoor camera. The indoor camera you can just set up wirelessly. Outdoor camera you need to plug it in to the router, just while you're setting it up and then you can just disconnect it, go through the phone and do the settings. It is blatantly obvious when you read the manual, but we don't, I don't do that. And Samir on technical, amazing, really nice guy. Yeah, he walked me through it. We ended up chatting about other stuff in the end, but yeah really good, really helpful. And also Duncan, the guy, who's sort of their sales guy or whatever Duncan does, but he's really good, helped me to get the product. I went to them to get the product, to help test it. So very good, I do like the product, and I would tell you if I didn't. Cheers.
Right. Just want to show you what I've done with the Y cam. So here, in the house. So I've got my existing, that's a Hive sensor. That still works, I'm actually comparing them. This is the Y cam. I'm checking to see which ... They work very similar. I'm checking to see which comes through quicker on notifications. Very similar at the moment to be honest.
I'll just take you outside. So I've taken down the competitor and I've got the Y cam up, the siren. It's lower because I wanted to keep it away from the shadow soffit. So cameras, I've already got four cameras on the front of the house. I had a bit of a blind spot down here on the back of the van, so I've put ... This is all my rubbish from all my boilers, but I've put the camera up there so that gets a good view right at the back of the van. So let me shut this door and I'll turn the alarm on and show you. There's my Nest and there's another camera. And then I've got another two cameras you see, so I'm all camera-d up, spoiled for choice to be honest. So if you listen, so it's armed.
So I've also got the siren, sorry the motion sensor, in the van. So I must do this with two hands. So from the back, it should go off. Are you ready? Let me just get rid of this. On three, I'm going to break in. Go. So there's the motion sensor, there's the alarm. And that's it basically. So I'll just show you, I've got the sensor on the side door, so that will pick up any motion. It basically will find itself ... When you drive off and when you come back, it finds itself and puts itself back on the system. It won't set the alarm off or anything. And when you drive off, it just looks like there's a fault until you arrive back and then it finds itself. So yeah, I'm fully covered now with the front. I probably, I'm going to have to take these other cameras down, but I want to put another one of the Y cams up.
But yeah, I'm happy with the system, really good. There we go. It's a bit of a deterrent, it looks right down the drive so any potential thief will see that there's a good chance I'm going to see them. I don't know what the police are going to do about it, but yeah. It's a very good system. Easy, really easy to do being the siren's wireless and the sensors. It's just the wiring up off the outside camera, which is probably the trickiest bit, but it's still not hard. Yeah, so really good. I would recommend to anybody looking for a cheap Cloud based security system. I'd say get the year's free seven days Cloud, after that there is a subscription, and there are subscriptions with the actual protect side of it as well. So you can have the sim card activates, so if your wireless goes down you are covered. I've got that, I'm trialling that at the moment, see how that goes. But yeah, so far so good. Definitely worth looking into, and yeah, happy with the system. Speak to you soon.
Right, I've just ordered another remote key fob for the wife. I'm going to add that now, and two more access sensors, so door sensors. I'll show you quickly, they came so, I ordered them separate over the re-seller site and they came really quick through DPD. You get notified when they're on route, or the day they're coming on route that they've done it. So it's really good communication through the courier, so that's fantastic. So I've tested that out and that works a treat. Very cheap through the re-seller side of it. I'll just show you what I've got. So I've just got two more access. They're all nicely packaged, nice little box. Five metre extension, so I can run the power further without having to put a plug socket in. And yeah, a nice new key fob.
Just a quick video to show you what the Y cam and Alexa can do together. Alexa, tell Y cam to disarm.
What is your pin?
0010. There you go, it's disarmed. You can arm it as well.
Your Y cam detect has been disarmed successfully.

Hi, I'm Dave from DCB Plumbing and Heating doing a Tool Talk review for Expert Trades and I'm a founding member of verified. Today I'm going to be doing a quick unboxing of the Y Cam Home Security Kit. I'm just going to do a quick overview of what everything is and what the company is about.
I'm a plumbing and heating engineer, so this is something that I'm hoping to get into as part of the smart home industry. Obviously, I already fit smart stats and things like that, so this is the next step. I do my own electrics and things like that, but obviously when it comes to real security, it's not something I've ever had anything to do with. This particular kit is good for me, as it is wireless. Obviously for me, it just requires drilling and tiny bits of insulation, rather than it be full rewiring and whatnot of the actual units themselves.
A quick overview is we've got the outside siren. It's a solar siren. As you can see just across this top bit here, there is a black window. It's all solar, so it runs on batteries. You just literally drill it to the wall, connect it to the app, and if anything else detects anything, obviously it will all go back to the same place because it's all interlinked together.
We've got this one here, which is the actual sensor alarm kit, which comes with the main hub and indoor PIR sensor to sense obviously movement, window door sensor, and one control. You can add as much of this as you want. For example, this is just the kit. I'm going to buy at least another remote to make sure that me and the wife both have one setting the alarm. To be honest, for me personally, I have a couple of cats, so the inside sensor is really not going to do too much good for me, but they do do pet sensors and they also obviously do more of the window sensors. I'll probably do away with the actual sensors personally. I'll do away with the sensors and just have the break in sensors, so on the front and back doors and on the windows and things like that, vulnerable windows, shall we say.
You've got this one, a little indoor camera. I've had all these open. This is a beautiful little piece of the kit is the indoor camera. Really, really good looking. Rivals any of the others when it comes to actual looks of the unit itself.
Finally, this one, another one that I'd add up. This is the outdoor camera. This is an excellent camera. Absolutely beautiful to look at. It's been really, really well made. It looks and feels really, really good quality. From the instructions and whatnot that I've had to look through, everything seems really, really good. I'll get on with a bit of installation and we'll get it back there, see where we go. Cheers guys.
Hi. I'm Dave from DCB Plumbing and Heating doing a Tool Talk review for Expert Trades and I'm a founding member of verified. Today I'm going to be doing a Tool Talk review on Y Cam, and it's not actually the cameras I'm going to be reviewing firstly. The first thing that I'm interested in is the alarm system and the outside solar sensor.
I'll start with the solar sensor, because all of this, everything that I'm going to instal is all going to come down to being connected to this. I've already got it out ready to show you. Here it is. Here's the kit. This is the outdoor sensor. This is going to be installed outside on the outside wall. It is solar powered, so there's no wires whatsoever to be installed with it. It is completely solar powered and wifi powered.
What I'm going to obviously do with where it's going isn't 100% instalment. It's about 50/50 throughout the day. It starts outside of the house, and I'm actually going to have it this side of the house, but my back garden is completely self-facing, so it's going to be roughly 50/50. I'll see if obviously running it on batteries and solar, if that's going to be good enough.
The reason I'm really interested in this is Y Cam is said to be as loud as a rock concert. Some of you guys probably already know, I'm quite well into my rock music, so I've gone to quite a lot of gigs. I've been to arenas. I've been to small venues. You name it, I've been there, and I've been to some very, very, very, very loud, very loud gigs. I'm going to give this a really good test out and see if I can tell you if it as loud as a rock concert. Everything that's going to be connected obviously will go through this alarm.
This is actually the alarm kit. This is the actual kit itself, so it comes with everything you can see on the box. This is the starter kit, so you've got your actual alarm. You've got the remote control. This one in the middle is a door or a window sensor, and this is a PIR motion detector, so there you go. As you can see, that's obviously how it goes.
What this is going to be is, how I'm going to instal it shall we say, is obviously the main thing is going to be on the inside. I'm going to have the remote on my keys. I'm going to have the initial door sensor on my front door, and I'm actually going to try and instal this PIR sensor into my van. The simple reason is when you've got the kit on and going, you can buy extra, so you can buy as many window and doors as you want and you can buy as many PIRs as you want, but they also sell the pet PIRs, so they obviously they don't pick low ground movement where it's set, where this one obviously is a regular one. I have a couple of cats, so they would set the alarm off.
What I'm hopefully going to do is put this in the van, which is literally just outside these windows, same side as the alarm's going on. Hopefully, every time I come home in the night, park it up next to the house, it will connect back to the wifi, set the house alarm on at night. If anyone tries to get in that van on the night, that PIR would obviously see a person and set my entire house alarm off.
Pretty good van to curate is what I'm hoping it's going to be, and obviously that would go for anything. I could put a sensor on a sliding door or even a sensor on the back doors, and when you come home at night, hopefully it will reconnect to the wifi because they're running on batteries, reconnect back to the wifi in the system, everything connects. If it does anything, it will go straight to the house alarm. Let's get cracking, see what happens.
Right, so I just want to quickly show you how easy it is to set everything up. I've actually got the hub installed plugged into the mains, plugged into the router via the ethernet cable that was provided, and literally. This is an android device. This is how it looks on this particular model. In the top corner up here, there's a plus sign. You press the plus sign and it literally gives you anything and everything that you want to add to the system. You download the app.
Which one shall we do? I've already got the remote installed, so I'm going to do the door sensor. You literally click on ... See if you can do it with, door sensor. There we go. It asks for the ID, which is on the back of all the items, so just as simple as that. Device name, so it asks for the number on the back, then device name, which is going to be called, for me, just going to be called front door. This is going to be the front door sensor, and there it is. Your device is paid, simple as that. Just as simple as that.
Let's see if it works from here. This one's already connected, so I press the lock button. There you go. You probably heard it beeping, so that's what I'm doing. Disarmed. Lovely bit of kit. Really well made so far. I like it.
I have connected everything else up that I wanted connected so far. I'm just on with the home side. How it works, there is actually a video of this on the app as you're doing it, but it's very, very simple. You take off the front of the siren. There's some wires.
What we're going to do, very, very simply, is if you look, all the wires have labels on them. The B is going to go to the B, the one in front here is red A, and that's going to go into red A at the bottom there, and obviously the orange C is already connected. Obviously all you're going to do is you're going to connect them wires up, so that easy. They're just simply pushing [inaudible 00:09:10] blocks. It's nothing to worry about. No power sort of anything. It's only batteried, anyway. You've just got to make sure that you get these in the right way. There's one already in so it shows you which way they go. Nice and simple. Just push them in. Make sure you've got B going to B and that you're going to have your red A going to red A.
This video is included within the Y Cam app. When you go through the actual kit itself, it prompts you to watch the video. You have to watch the video. What comes with it, a couple little screws. Just go into the back to secure it. Just make sure you've got no wires whatsoever caught in when you put the thing across there, when you put the case back on. Make sure all that's sealed, ready to go.
Like I said, everything is on the actual app itself. When I added this siren to my system, whether it's just my phone or because it's an android phone or whatever, it prompted me to do a firmware update. Took about a minute, then obviously it said successful. Dead easy, dead simple. I'm going to go attach everything to the wall and I'll see how loud it is first, so I'll get everything connected first.
It's all been connected. Really, really simple. Once you've got the wires inside connected, it prompts you to press and hold the pare button whilst pressing the pare button on the app, so dead easy.
I've just installed the actual thing outside. As you can see, the sun is just about to peek around the actual house itself. It's halfway. The time now is 20 to 12, so probably about right by 50/50, so it wouldn't get any sun in the morning. There it is. Won't get any sun in the morning, but I do believe it will get plenty of sun past dinnertime up to 1:00 in that kind of region. It's going to have the sun for the rest of the day. As you can see over there, it is just bungalows. I actually do have the sun until pretty much sundown. Behind me, now that way is south facing, so there it is.
Dave: Right then, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to set the alarm. The things I've got connected now is obviously the main hub, this fob, my door sensor, and an outside siren alarm, so now I'm going to set the alarm off and see exactly what happens.
I imagine that will go. Right, so fully armed now obviously. I've got no PIR, so I can move about. That's no problem. I'm going to open the door. I'm hoping that is what's going to set the alarm off so I can see exactly what's going to happen. Obviously, the sensor at the door is open. Right, so that's what we get in here. Yep, so everything's connected properly. We're connected outside. It's going off inside as well, so there you go. Simple as that.
Let's unlock it. Simple as that, so yeah. I have to admit, it's very loud. I'm surprised. I like this. This means that you don't have to have the outside alarm. You don't technically have to have one on the outside if you've not got the right sunlight, or in this case, the sunlight obviously for the battery, you don't need one outside. Considering it's wireless and it's battery powered, it is just as loud as any other alarm I've ever heard. I had an alarm on my old house, so it's just as loud coming from the unit with a battery power, so yeah, there you go.
That concludes the video of the Y Cam Protect. Hopefully that shows enough information on everything you do. I'm very impressed with the actual quality of the stuff and everything that comes with it. Obviously, everything's made of plastic. I understand that, but the siren alarm outside, that is really, really loud considering that it's actually wireless and battery powered. That outside is very, very loud. It's as loud as a rock concert. Don't play any Metallica, but it's definitely as loud as them.
Yeah, everything seems really, really good quality. I think if I'm totally honest, the best thing about the entire experience is the app. I think the app is absolutely fantastic. It's so easy to use. It's so easy to add everything in. Like I said, everything's got a serial number and things on the back. It is just so simple and so easy. I am definitely going to start adding this to my repertoire of sales because I just think, I don't see why you wouldn't want one.
There is added extras that you can add on, so at the moment, I've got everything down as free. What that means is you pay no monthly subscriptions, nothing like that. Nothing is added to it, but you can actually have a subscription. I believe it's about 10 pounds a month or 100 pounds for the entire year if you pay for it annually, so obviously you're getting two months free.
What that does is that adds everything together through the app, which means that if your wifi ever goes down or if anything ever happens, it's always backed up. It's backed up onto the cloud and things like this. There are a lot of added extras.
I do believe Nest and Honeywell and all the others do actually charge subscriptions for all your iCloud systems and all your iCloud. I don't know what their costs are, but I think it's about 10 pounds a month. If it was a wired system and you was paying someone like Fisher Alarms, big alarm company, to have a monitored system, I dare say you're going to be paying similar money for a proper monitored system to what you are with this, and this is still a monitored system. It's still the exact same thing.
You get nothing with the subscription. You get the notifications and you get movement alarms, so you get better storage options for keeping all the footage and the alarms going off and all the notifications, they stay longer and whatnot, so it is handy to have. It is something I'm definitely going to look into.
Now I've got the system setup, I'm going to add a couple, and we're going to get some more door sensors and key fobs ordered, because I think they're great to have, just have on you at all times. I think they're a really good idea. You can do it on your phone, so it's not a problem.
That's the next thing I need to do as well is I'm going to connect it to the wife's phone, so before I order another one then, I'm going to connect it to the wife's phone so she can set the alarm on her phone. Hopefully it'll all just tie in pretty simple. I'm sure if she just logs into my account, it'll be fairly straightforward so she'll be able to go straight on and off on her phone.
Yeah, I'm really, really impressed with this system, so I'll give you a review in a couple of months time once I've used it and once I've probably got settled, but on the monthly subscriptions, I think I am going to do that. I don't think you can put a price on proper security. Once all the cameras and everything are setup, I think it's going to hopefully integrate really, really well. Hopefully see you in a couple of months with another review. Thank you. Take care.

Hi there, Dave Armstrong from DA Gas Heating and Plumbing. Today I'm doing a Tool Talk review for Expert Trades, and we're installing the Y-Cam security system in this three-bed bungalow in Mildenhall. Let's go inside and see what's in the box.
So I've just opened up the Y-Cam kit, and inside we have the solar outdoor siren, so as it says, it's solar, no need for batteries. Which we'll put up on the front of the building. We've got one outdoor camera, which the customer has asked to be again, put out on the front of the property facing the front door and the vehicles on the drive. We've got two indoor cameras. And then the alarm kit, which comes with a hub, access sensor and motion sensor, and a remote. So let's get it open, let's get it fitted.
So we've just opened up the indoor camera. Let's take a look what's inside. That's the camera. Tiny little camera; I would say it's probably about 40 mm by 40 mm square, and about 15 mm, 20 mm in depth. So it's quite small, quite impressive actually compared to other, similar products that I've seen. Also in the box you get a stand for it. The camera screws onto the stand, and a plug in lead. Screw the camera on. Plug and lead, into the back of that, into a 245 plug, and away you go.
Camera: simple case of two screws, a hole through the brickwork, pull your cable through, plug it on, and a grub screw that holds it to the wall.
I've just finished the installation of the Y-Cam security system and camera. Overall really impressed with the units themselves. They seem a real solid bit of kit. The camera's metal, the outside camera's metal. The indoor cameras that I mentioned earlier, they're nice and small and compact. To set it up, it was relatively easy. Took quite a bit longer than I thought it would do to be fair. So the installation, actually putting the cameras up and box up, was really straightforward. But once you start adding your devices in, you have to add all the devices individually: it took quite a while to be fair. Overall, it's taken me two and a half hours to install three cameras, one outdoor camera, the alarm box, the hub.
But like I say, looks a really good bit of kit. I briefly had a look at the app, which I'll go into in a minute. It's something ... working with Y-Cam is something that I'm quite interested in doing. I'm a plumber and heating engineer by trade, but being able to add something else, another string to my bow, so to speak, would give me an extra opportunity to bring more revenue into the company. So it's something I'm looking forward to doing, and speaking to Y-Cam some more in the future.
What's that?
So we've just finished installing the alarm system, and I just wanted to show you the app quickly. So this is the screen where we can set the alarm, so if we press that there ...
Y-Cam: Action failed. Sensor fault detected.
It won't set because there's motion in the kitchen, so we'll unset that.
Y-Cam: Disarmed.
So these are your options down here, so protect is that screen I've just shown you. Cameras will take you into the cameras. And as I said, I've set up the outside camera. That's the quality of the outdoor camera, which I'm really impressed with. Going to be interesting to see what it's like in night mode, but really impressed with the quality in daytime. I'll just show you the indoor cameras. This is the hall cam. So that's viewing live as you can see. It's also got sound on it as well, which is a really good feature. And you can see the previous recordings down there. Going into activity, it's just your activity log; shows you all the notifications and alerts that's happened throughout the course of the day. Just takes a few seconds to load. And there you go, you can see today's date. Oops, wrong one. 55 videos, and you can scroll through, select which one you want to watch back.
So that's the app really. That's pretty much all you'd need to know about the app. There's nothing else really in there that you need to go worry about it. So there you go. The Y-Cam app.
So we've just finished installing the Y-Cam camera and alarm system, and I just thought I'd ask the customer John here for some feedback, and to see what he thought of the camera and the app setup. So John, what do you think?
From what I can see so far, it looks pretty good. Pretty good camera, nice and neat looking. Those indoor cameras are well smart, and the sensors look attractive as well. From what I've seen on the app so far, it seems good to use, and good quality pictures.
How long did it take for us to install the system?
About two and a half hours to install the system, it's not intrusive at all. It's quite neat.
Yeah.
I'm well pleased.
Brilliant. So will you be able to give us some more feedback in couple of weeks, once you've used the app?
Certainly once I've got to play with it, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah, definitely.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Thank you David.
Thank you.

Hello Peter here from Lyttle Smart Homes, Northern Ireland. I'm doing a Tool Talk testers review on the Y-cam products that I have received a couple of weeks ago. I've been playing a bit with them for a few weeks, and I find them very, very, good product. I've dealt with their customer support a lot, because I just sorta went ahead and never looked through instructions as I normally do, and sort of tried to make a mistake on a few things and a couple things didn't work. So, Y-Cam support were on the phone with me the next day, explained everything that was going on, got it all sorted, got it all up and running.
I actually put the system in within probably about a half an hour, got everything set up. Everything after that, obviously it's position and stuff like that. So, in general, probably about three hours I would give to put in a system like this. Depends what way you're gonna go, whether you go POE, if you have a network switch logo, or if you have the wireless. But, if you get into certain areas that don't have power supplies, then you run into more issues.
In general, I think the POE's probably the way to go, but then you're gonna to have to supply a network switch on top of everything else that you're already supplying. So, it's worth thinking about that whenever you're putting it in. But, in general I have the plus package, which sends me a notification to my phone. And, it does work, it has worked. I've been using it in the last day or so just get notifications through, setting the alarm off, triggering it. So, I'll put a screenshot up of the text message that I've received, and it just comes through is Y-Cam.
But, there may be some way of adjusting it, just so it gives an actual statement, but it tells you what sensor has actually tripped. So, I have one there that that says the door contact was tripped, and that's what set the alarm off. Also, the indoor camera, the way I have it set up, you can set up the position of where it takes a picture, or where it picks up when somebody comes in through the door. It starts recording automatically. Same with the camera inside, it starts recording when it sees movement. So, very good for likes of say setting up cameras for your van, or if you have it in the house at the front door, picking somebody up coming through the front door. If you have a lot of problems with people maybe routeing doors, letter boxes, or trying to break in through the front door, that's the way to catch them.
But, in general very, very good. Very good little camera. Very, very discreet. Not something you would see straightaway. So, if you walked into the room, like I have it in the caravan, and I've been walking about for last week and a half, and it's been recording me moving about, but I never even noticed it. Actually, only until today when I was doing my review, that I actually go through all the video playbacks and see that was me coming in doing my books.
So, in general I would give the Y-Cam a thumbs up. Very, very good product. And, I'm actually doing a bit more advertising for it. And, I may also be testing another product against it later on.

So, now we're onto the Solar Outdoor Siren. That's actually been on box. It is very, very loud. I've had it in here go off a few times, and had me young boy, he was crying. So, very, very loud. Definitely not advised to set off indoors for no reason.
So, it comes well packaged and the instructions for this are actually ... There's instructions in the box, but whenever you actually go onto the app, it give you step by step instructions and how to set it up. So, it's actually pretty easy to get the siren going. There's two plugs you need plugged in, so your battery and your solar connection. And, that just keeps it all a charged and up and running.

We're the same again with the protect, box is very, very good. Looks really well. Very professional, very like a Samsung setup. So, you have your instruction manuals, and if you read the instructions on it like I did, it's pretty easy to set up. So, I had a few issues at the start, which actually wasn't a bad thing, because it meant then that I could test out to technical support, which was second to none. Very, very impressed with Y-Cams back up service. Guy rung me, said I had an issue, sent the email the next day, gave me a phone call, says right, shows me how to set it all up.
So the wee Y-Cam 24 hour protect security alarm sticker. And the sticker obviously these are the wee protectors. Get one of them for your camera, if you don't use the ariel on the outside one, and you have one of these for the alarm protect panel inside comes [inaudible 00:06:05] obviously. Your door contact and your motion detection are battery part. Basically pull out the wee tab, and go onto the app. And, I find the app very easy to set all the products up. I think I had all maybe three, four of them. So, I actually set them up within half an hour. Obviously run into a couple of problems because, I didn't read the instructions I just rushed on and done it. But, that's totally on me you know, you don't know how to fix something if it's not broke. So, I like to test and see how stupid I really am.
But, all the instructions are very informative. So, very, very good product in general. The alarm siren's very loud in the house. So, if it went off it would be very noticeable, very like your smoke alarm would be.
It was the same again with the Protect Alarm as you've seen the hub is already connected, and it's up and running. Set up to work. So, in the box you get the protect hub motion sensor door contact. So, I actually have the door contact installed on doorframe here. And, the motion stuck up here. Pretty nice looking motion detector. I've seen quite a lot of ugly ones. The Y-Cams I actually find pretty nice. That's a good looking unit, and the door contact you wouldn't really notice. It's very, very good. Very compact, and works very well.
They also have this wee push button controller, which is very, very good. Identical to what's already on the app. So, you have your home button, your on set the alarm and set the alarm, and you can set up your plus function to do specific things. So, if I hit the plus button on this here it will turn on the two cameras. Also, if I hit the plus button, I can set it up like a panic alarm that it would send a notification text message to a full number, which is very, very good. Maybe a good job for a older people, they may be sat beside their bed and use it as a panic alarm. Because, people wouldn't automatically notice, it's hidden. And, if they just hit that plus, they could send a notification or it could trigger the alarm off.
So, a very good wee product, and even my three year old son was looking at, and I said, "Son, what's this look like?" And, he says, "Oh, that's the same as the app on on your phone daddy." So very, very good. If a three year old can notice that they're exactly the same, once he knows how to work with these, he'll know how to work the phone too.

So, this is the Y-Cam app. So, whenever you first open it up, it's a ... Sorry. So, your main screen is the protect screen, which mine is set at disarmed at the moment. Your connections wired, and I can have ... I have the plus set up, so I can have it once my wire connection disappears, it will send text messages to my phone through 4G. So, through the protects gives you the exact same buttons as ... So, this is the phone and this is the keypad, so identical to look at. So, no difference in setting them up, and you do have a lot more controls on the app obviously. So, this tells me what's actually armed and disarmed. So, Internet enabled is the Wifi hub at the moment. The alarms disarmed. So, these are all triggers that have set the alarm off. This will just be me playing about today.
So these are all the recent alarms. Then go up onto protect under the cameras. Oh, sorry. Under the activity log, and it'll do a list of the activity per day. So, today there's 81 videos and 33 events. So, I actually installed it on the first, 47 videos for the third, no videos on the fifth. Actually the power in the caravan went off, so on the cameras. This is the baby monitor. I have it setup as, which is now gonna go live. And, that's me sitting, and that's the whole full screen, plus you can actually hear my voice in the background, which is the camera's recording sound as well.
Also, I can go through the list. So, if I turn it back that way, I can go through and scroll through what motion recordings have been today. You can also do that per day. So, I'd have to swipe left, I then have a camera fitted outside, which is the outdoor one. And, it's just parred and using Wifi for the signal. So, that's a live video of what's going on. And, full screen and it's pretty clear. But, it's very, very sharp for ... I was pretty surprised how good of quality it is.
And, also same again, it picks up sound. But very, very good. So, if I go through back into settings. I can go on the hub. And, so these are all my products that I've attached to the hub. So, my key fob, so you can rename it the door sensor, you can deactivate, reactivate these, and your siren sounder. So, once you set up the sounder, you click on that, and it goes through and tells you how to do that. I had to set it all up.
So, I have the plus service which allows me to have full numbers that I ... So, it'll let me send information through the phone number, and also a second phone number. So, I actually have one, and it's sent to me and to my wife. So, and then you can set up your plus button for what it does. So, you can turn all the cameras on, you can send an instant SMS text alert. So, if set up, you can set the plus state panic button, and set up beside the bed, and basically it'll send a notification to a number, whether it's a family member or somebody else living in the house. So, you SMS or voice call.
You can set the ... And, this is the signal strength of the 4G. So, it says currently connected to 02 medium strength signal. So, we're actually out pretty much in the sticks, but I get 4G here anyway. So, I think it's 3G or 4G, so it'll automatically sace it back to the server if there's for alarm triggers and things like that. So, if you lose internet, you're not gonna lose everything. You can override the sensors, and things like that. So, and then support, as I said, I've dealt with them directly, and I find them very, very good.