Vimtag P1 Smart Cloud IP Camera: Step up your security and have peace of mind (Review)
Everyone is looking for more and more security in today’s world and home security is a big one. Lucky for us, we can get security cameras for our homes much cheaper than they once were, and they are much easier to install. Vimtag has quite a few options when it comes to IP Cloud cameras that can suit your needs. Today, we have Vimtag’s $130 P1 Smart Cloud IP Camera.
There are so many different areas this camera can be used for besides the obvious security. For example, baby monitoring. I can tell you from recent experience, shopping for a regular baby monitor can be expensive and the quality of the feed isn’t always great. But with the P1 Camera, you can get a quality feed plus once your baby doesn’t need a monitor it can be used for other things.
Set Up
Getting the Vimtag P1 setup is a simple process that it can’t really even be classified as a process. Plug in your new shiny camera and let it do its calibration. Note: If you are using Ethernet, there is an adapter that you need to plug in that comes in the box. You can set up the camera through either the app or the website; I chose the app. Once you’ve opened the app, you must create a username and password then log in.
After you’ve logged in, you are taken to what I call the hub. This is where all your Vimtag devices live. You click the add device button and a QR Code Scanner pops up. Scan the code on the bottom of your camera. Once that is complete, you will be given a QR Code on your phone to scan with the camera, and then wham bam thank you, ma’am, your camera is ready to rock and roll.
Review
I have played with lots of different kinds of tech devices over the years, and I can honestly say that this is one of the simplest products I have seen. Set up is a breeze and just basic monitoring is easy; of course, there are many setting for advanced monitoring. I have to make one tiny comment about the operation of the camera. While it is true that operation is simple, it’s not obvious how to make the camera move around. I went to the monitoring website to look for extra settings, and I scrolled over the feed while it was playing. I noticed arrows at each edge. That’s how I discovered how to maneuver the camera up, down, and a complete 360 degrees, which is awesome. I believe they should include that in the pamphlet that comes with it since some may not discover it on their own.
Let’s start off by discussing the camera feed. We all have seen convenience store videos where the video is choppy and grainy. It’s hard to make anything out. What’s even crazier is you know they spent a ton of money for the equipment and installation. The P1’s video is clear and has the ability to zoom in 4 times. The audio is equally clear, and it has the added feature to talk from the app or website through the camera to whoever is in the room.
There are a ton of settings that you can use to configure each camera. In fact, there are so 
many that I won’t be able to cover them all, but I will hit a few highlights. One big feature I like is being able to schedule recording. You can set up to four schedules for as long as you want and whatever days you want, or you can simply choose to record 24/7. For that, you will need extra storage which is discussed later.
Motion detection is one of my favorite features this device has. You have quite a few options when it comes to using this one. A quick snapshot can be taken and stored, or you can record what is happening when the camera detects motion. Alerts can also be set up so that you get a notification on your computer or phone when something trips the sensor. This is great to have when away from your house on vacation or just at the store. Make sure you use the notifications only when you’re away because if your camera is in a high traffic area, your phone will be going off every few seconds when people move.
The last thing is mounting your camera. It comes with a kit that allows you to mount it if you choose to do so. You can mount it with two simple screws which will give you free range of motion to record with. If you choose to mount your camera upside down, you go into the settings under Others and toggle the flip switch, or your feed will be upside down.
Other Features
- Multi User Support
- Night Vision
- 360 degree audio pickup
- SD Card support
S1 Cloud Box
I said we would discuss storage later and here it is…the bonus review. If you have one camera that you are only using for minimal recording or perhaps only doing snapshots of motion, then you probably don’t need extra storage as it will just save to your phone or an SD card in the camera itself. But if you are using the camera for a business or are really hardcore about your security, then you may want extra storage. That’s where the S1 Cloud Box comes into play. The S1 comes with 1TB of storage for $150 so you can record 24/7.
The S1 can handle four feeds at one time which means you can store for up to 60 days. You can retrieve the data from the box via the internet whenever you want. So make sure this item is tucked away out of site so any thieves can’t find it.
Setting this device up is just as simple as the camera, if not more simple. After you plug in the device and connect it to your router, you go into the Settings menu in the app and navigate to storage. Click the QR Code button and scan it with your phone, and just like that, it’s ready to go.
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Conclusion
The need for security is definitely much higher than it use to be. We don’t live in a Leave it to Beaver society where you can leave your doors unlocked and be fine. You need something to monitor your house while you’re gone. But if you’re not really worried about that, there are still other uses such as monitoring elderly loved ones or even keeping up with your dog while you’re away. No matter your reason, the Vimtag P1 Smart Cloud IP Camera and S1 Cloud Box are fantastic options for you.
*As of June 2 the P1 Smart Cloud IP Camera is on sale for $109.95*
- Vimtag Website
- Buy Vimtag P1 Smart Cloud IP Camera
- Buy S1 Cloud Box
- Download the app in the Play Store
[Review] Charge six devices at once with Choetech
Yeah that’s right, a sextuplet of devices. The Choetech multi-port USB charger has quickly become one of my most useful gadgets. It’s annoying to keep track of each devices’ individual cable and charger. While I haven’t been able to cut down on the amount of cables I have, I can now use the Choetech charger for most of my power needs.
Features
- Input: AC100-240V
- Total Maximum Output: 5V/10A
- Charging Port Output: 5V/10A (max)
- Dimension: 88.4 x 29 x 71.5mm / 3.4 x 1 x 2.8 inches
- Weight: 158g
Only two of the USB ports are USB 3.0; the rest are USB 2.0. Similar to the VoltIQ car charger I previously reviewed, the Choetech has an “auto detect” technology, which means that it automatically identifies the device you plug in and delivers the fastest possible charge for it. There’s also a circuit protection system, which is really neat. It shuts down in the case of overvoltage, overcurrent, overheating or short circuits. The charger comes with a 12-month warranty.
Oh, and did I mention that the two USB 3.0 ports are certified as Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0? I’ve used it for a while now and I haven’t come across any problems yet. I don’t have any phones that have quick charge technology, so I couldn’t test how fast it was.
The charger itself has a slim profile, and it’s smooth to the touch with a matte black plastic that almost feels like velvet rubber. With the amount of portable battery packs I’ve been sent to review, I tried to set up a “daisy chain” where I plugged Battery A into the charger, Battery B into Battery A, and both Battery C and my phone into the charger.
I didn’t test how long they were all able to charge because I was afraid of all that electrical power collapsing into a black hole, but suffice it to say that I think it would work. Also, while charging devices the Choetech does get slightly warm, but not so warm that you would start to worry.
Conclusion
I definitely recommend the Choetech charger for any person with a bunch of USB-powered gadgets. It works as great (and sometimes better) than the individual chargers that are sent with each device. You can buy the Choetech 6-port charger for about $20 on Amazon.
Google launches beta testing program for Maps on Android
Here’s one for adventurous techies: Google has launched a beta testing program for Maps. If you’d like to be among the first people to try its unreleased, experimental features, you can sign up to be a tester through its Play Store portal. Since you’re trying out beta features, though, you’re bound to encounter bugs and other issues. Android Police has the APK available for download, as well, if you prefer to go that route instead. The big G has also released an update for the stable version of Maps. It’s not a huge upgrade by any means, but it comes with new notification settings and a splash screen for Android Wear devices.
Via: Android Police
Source: Google Play
Backdrops review: Material to the max
Overview
There’s a wide variety of quality wallpaper apps on the Google Play Store, and there’s even no shortage of wallpaper apps that feature the Material Design style in their offerings. These apps are typically well designed with a modern “Material” interface, offering sleek animations and a fluid UI. Within the wide array of wallpaper apps, Backdrops attempts to best them all.
Backdrops offers hundreds of wallpapers made in-house by the Backdrops team, as well as many more from the user community. Users can upload wallpapers themselves to be approved by the Backdrops team and shared with others. Backdrops updates the wallpaper offerings daily and offers a “Wall of the Day” which is hand-picked daily by the Backdrops team.
User Interface
As we have come to expect from most wallpaper apps, Backdrops is developed with Material Design in mind, and allows the user to navigate the app with three sections located at the top. The first section is Community, offering a pool of third-party wallpapers uploaded by the users themselves. After extensively checking many of the wallpapers I liked, I was pleased to see all of them were offered in very high resolutions which can take advantage of today’s sharpest screens. While scrolling, users can tap the heart on the bottom right of the image to save to the user’s Favorite collection, or tap the image to dive into further options like saving it to the device or setting it as your homescreen wallpaper.
The Explore tab features the “Wall of the Day” followed by all of the Backdrops exclusive wallpapers, created by the team themselves. I must say, there should be a wallpaper for everyone in here. There’s a wide variety of pictures including minimal, Material, abstract and more for just about anybody. I immediately added quite a few to my favorites after moments of scrolling.
Scroll over to the last tab brings you to your Favorites, and gives you the option to use Muzei to cycle your favorites on your homescreen periodically.
In-App Purchases
Yikes, we all hate those words. Backdrops does need to support itself though, as it displays ads throughout the app and offers certain collections of wallpapers only available through purchasing them. The Collections tab, which can be accessed by the app’s hamburger menu on the left, offers the “Trinity” collection, “Be Together”, and “Pro Pack”.
The Trinity collection is really just for Pink Floyd fans, or users who really like having a colorful triangle as their wallpaper. Be Together offers pictures for die-hard Android fans that mostly feature the Nexus logo and the Android mascot, but this collection is free anyway. The Pro Pack… is nice and all, but don’t purchase the pro version of this app just for those. It’s a bonus, but they aren’t much better looking than the ones you’ll find in the rest of the app.
Conclusion
Backdrops offers the best of what a modern wallpaper app should be, from a beautifully designed interface to an arsenal of eye-pleasing content. I liked the design of this app so much that I purchased the pro version just so the ads wouldn’t ruin it for me. Backdrops definitely takes the spot as my go-to wallpaper app.
Download Backdrops for free from the Play Store here
Facebook kills its little-known Notify app
Remember Facebook’s Notify app? No? Well then, it has gone into the ether before you even knew it. The social network is shutting it down after launching it merely seven months ago. Notify was designed to send notifications from a curated list of news sources — you could pick from its content partners, including Bloomberg Business, CNN and The New York Times — to your lock screen. You could even follow specific parts of a publication, such as the sports section, instead of the whole thing. In a statement the social network sent out, it said that it’ll begin integrating Notify’s features into other products like Messenger on Wednesday. It will also pull Notify from the App Store.
We’re guessing the company is talking about using Messenger’s chatbots to deliver the latest updates to users. Some pubs like CNN and The Wall Street Journal are already running their own bots, and more companies will surely follow. Unlike Notify, chatbots don’t need a standalone app, so all Facebook users can access them anytime.
Here are the full statement Facebook sent TechCrunch and the notice it blasted to subscribers’ phones earlier:
“Starting on Wednesday, we will begin integrating Notify functionality into other Facebook products, like Messenger, and will be removing Notify from the App Store. Since launching Notify, we’ve learned a lot about how to make notifications as timely and relevant as possible and we heard from people using the app that Notify helped them stay informed about things they cared about throughout the day.
With more than 900 million people using Messenger each month, we think there is a great opportunity for publishers to reach even more people interested in real-time updates from their favorite sources.”
Via: The Verge, TechCrunch
VSCO update simplifies how you capture, edit and browse photos
Last time we heard from VSCO, the company trotted out a separate photography app for GIFs. Turning its attention back to its flagship software for snapshots, the VSCO options for both Android and iOS are set to receive a substantial update to better balance creativity and discovery. First, a retooled gesture-based UI lets you easily flip back and forth between the photography editing tools and a feed of images from the folks you follow in the app. The overall look of the interface is simplified, too.
In addition to improved image capture and search functionality, there’s a new “Find My Friends” tool as well. You’ve likely seen something similar in other apps, especially those that integrate with Facebook. The feature basically allows you to find the people you know who are also taking pictures with the VSCO app. Social features were added to the app a few updates back, and the pending updates will only build on the discovery options. New versions of both the Android and iOS app are rolling out over the next couple of weeks, but for now, you can take a look at what’s on the way via the video below.
Source: VSCO
Sony adds picture-in-picture editing to PS4 Sharefactory app
For a growing number of people, it’s not enough just to play a video game anymore. They also want to record and share their favorite moments, whether as a walkthrough, highlight reel or humorous “let’s play” experience. Sony’s answer to this — Sharefactory, a video editing app for the PlayStation 4 — has now been updated to facilitate more complex videos. The biggest addition is Track 2, formerly the Commentary Track, which now lets you add a second piece of footage from the Capture Gallery. With this, you can show two different clips simultaneously, side-by-side.
That’s useful if you want to show how a particular move or strategy (think Overwatch) will affect different parts of the map. Or how tackling an objective in different ways — a freedom offered in games like Hitman, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored — will change your experience.
As part of the update, Sony has also increased the app’s export limit to 60 minutes — useful if you like making “let’s play” videos — and added Chroma-key support, which lets you edit footage shot with a green screen. Sharefactory will never match professional software like Adobe Premiere, but these new features should make it a more competent alternative.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Vysor allows you to mirror multiple Android devices
Google developer, Koush, announced an update to his popular device mirroring app Vysor on Thursday that will enable users to share multiple android screens to a PC, Linux or Mac simultaneously and then grant remote access to the device farm. The new “Share All” feature works just like the original Vysor Share: you plug the Android into the computer via a USB cable, install the visor app and activate it to mirror the Android screen to the computer. However, Share All takes that process a step further by allowing the user to link multiple handsets to a computer and then use it as a shared server which multiple people can remotely access.
This could prove a boon for developers. You’d be able to centralize all your various test devices to a single computer and share access to the entire array with the rest of the team.
Source: Google+
MiMedia: A worthy contender in the storage battle (Review)
Overview
In today’s world, there are many different companies that deal with media storage, but you need a few different ones to make sure you can store it all. MiMedia is a mass media storage solution that can handle all your digital storage needs.
Developer: MiMedia Inc
Cost: Free ( In-app upgrade for more storage)
Highlights
- Cloud Storage of all types of media
- Cross Device/Platform compatibility
- Private sharing
- One Click Uploads from Flickr, Facebook Dropbox, and Google Plus
- Easy organization of media.
- Built in Rediscovery
Review
Start Screen
Mass storage is an area covered by a few big names. There are a couple that come to mind like Google, who brings two different products to the game, and Dropbox. To be competitive, you have to try and set yourself apart. The biggest advantage MiMedia is its ability to cover all media in one product. Some may cover photos and video while some may cover all media but may be more expensive. This product covers all your digital files with pricing options that fit your budget.
There are quite a few things to cover, but let’s start with design. It’s very clean and beautiful and feels like there is the spirit of material design in the animation, such as tapping the menu button and the menu slides from the left side. However, they put their own spin on it like holding down a photo to “flick” it add it where you want to like sharing or moving it to a MiDrive. Everything is clear and easy to understand and locate.
The process of uploading and sharing content is made easy. You are given the option of uploading from the device you’re on or from other services like Facebook and Dropbox. Music and documents are the exceptions to this as they need to be uploaded from your computer. Sharing is a two click process. Simply tap the media you want to share and the tap the service you want to share it on.
MiMedia also offers you the options of building collections of media as well as what they call
MiDrive
their Midrives. While both of these options are similar what separates them is Midrive’s ability to create a drive that can be shared with others in a way that the people you share with can chat and add media to the drive.
Depending on the amount of files you have stored in your MiMedia, it can be hard to find certain files which is why it has the ability to favorite those files you want easy access to and stores them in a favorites folder. Of course, once you can always change your mind and unfavorite it.
With MiMedia being cross platforms there are some limitations. The aforementioned Music and documents only being able to be uploaded from a computer being one of those. Documents present another problem as well. Not only can you only upload them from the computer, but you can only view them from the computer. Even if you favorite the document it only shows up on the computer version.
Another limitation is when you upload media you are limited to Facebook and Dropbox in the app. If you are uploading from a computer you also have the ability to upload from Flickr and Google+ as well. This feature is coming to the app later so it’s only an inconvenience for a while.
The biggest thing that needs to be fixed is the lack of editing. None of the media you upload can be edited inside the service, this includes documents. This means you will still need another program for that which kind of sucks, but I’m sure the team will rectify this. Hopefully sooner than later.
New Update
Today MiMedia has announced a brand new feature that none of the other services easily offer, Live Wallpaper. This is the way the process works. From any Photos, Collections or MiDrive you set the photos you want as a live wallpaper, and how often you want the to rotate and you’re done. What’s cool about this update is if you set an entire shared MiDrive as your live wallpaper, anybody you have shared that drive with can add photos and it will show up as your wallpaper.
Price Options
MiMedia off you a range of affordable options that can easily fit your budget.
-
Starter
Offers 10 GB Free
2,500 Photos
125 Videos
2,000 Songs
10,000 Documents -
Basic
Offers 500 GB $7.99/Month or $85/Year
125,000 Photos
6.250 Videos
100,000 Songs
500,000 Documents -
Plus
Offers 1 TB $9.99/Month or $99/Year
250,000 Photos
12,500 Videos
200,000 Songs
1,000,000
Conclusion
MiMedia is not a name that pops up on many people’s radar when discussing media storage, but it should. Even with its flaws the entire product is just as good if not better in some aspects than others. If nothing else it’s worth trying out with the 10GB of free storage.
*Note: While MiMedia is more than an app, it’s a service. It should be noted that I only tested out the Android App and the PC-based versions. No Apple products were tested. *
Download MiMedia in the Play Store
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[Review] Lock up your valuables with the LockSmart Mini
No more fumbling with your keys in the dark. With Bluetooth-enabled locks, Australian-based company Dog & Bone envisions a “keyless future”. I spent a week or so testing the LockSmart Mini, a slim padlock that gives a glimpse of a future filled with the Internet of Things.
Features
- Keyless: for bikes, lockers, sheds, gates, fences and more.
- Shared Access: one lock, multiple users, define user access
- Tracking: know when + who opened the lock
- Secure: 128-bit advanced encryption + 256-bit cloud generated private key
- Long lasting: up to 2 years before re-charging; app prompts you to re-charge. Uses Bluetooth low energy.
- Tough: hardened steel shackle + die-cast alloy body
- Weatherproof: rain, hail, snow, or shine – from -4° F to 158° F
Both the app and lock are simple to use. Download the app, turn on Bluetooth, turn the lock on with a button on the bottom, and pair it with your phone. The lock is rechargeable with a microUSB port on the bottom, hidden under a flap.
In order to conserve energy, the padlock stays off unless you press the small button on the bottom, hidden under a rubber-sealed flap along with the microUSB port. Thankfully, you don’t need to open the flap in order to press the button, which saves the USB port from rain or snow.
Due to whatever chemicals are used in production, the padlock gives off a not-unpleasant smell of gummy bears. Dear readers, if you know of a chemical that smells like gummy bears, please let me know in the comments.
Dog & Bone offers three types of padlocks: the full-sized padlock, the mini, and the LockSmart Travel. You can find the LockSmart Mini for $70 on Dog & Bone’s website. The LockSmart app is available on iOS and Android.
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AIVAnet 