I just wanted to take a second to lay down some thoughts on the Nest wired camera which I’ve had in my studio since roughly November of 2022.
What I like
The industrial design of this camera is inviting and friendly, to me it’s like a friendly face in your home. I think that’s really important, it’s overall size is quite small, but not so small it’s hidden, it’s visible but doesn’t feel intrusive to me.
Two way audio, not only can I hear what’s happening in the space, I can speak back to the room with the built in speaker!
I deliberately chose the wired version because I felt it was important the camera was always available and didn’t see the need to move it, I also had power close by, although the cable length is quite generous for an IOT device!
You can also view your Nest camera by asking your google home speaker to stream the camera. So in my case it’s a simple as saying “Hey Google, stream the studio camera.”
Also you can now stream your camera feeds via web using home.google.com to view multiple live video feeds from the cameras.
What I Don’t Like
– Nest Cam watermark in the top right corner of the video, still present even with subscription and no clear or immediate way to remove it.
Setup
The setup experience was hassle free, if you have ever setup a Chromecast, it feels quite similar, power up the device, tell it about your wifi in the Google Home app, and let it do its thing, the camera will appear in the home app soon enough!
Dear Google
I’d love the ability to get access to the stream from the camera directly so it could be streamed via say RTMP if I desired.
I’d also like to see the the implementation of end-to-end encryption, placing a camera which is connected to the internet in my home is a huge amount of trust, given some of the issues with competing cameras on the market lately I’d feel much better knowing only I have eyes on the camera.
