I really love that I can watch my son from any room and talk to him through this camera. It looks great and I am able to hear him, however I would have like the volume to be higher on the receiving end. I often have to turn it up on my phone all the way to ensure I can hear him. If it had not been for the alerts I may not know he’s crying due to the low volume. Also I’m not sure if this works on an iPad but since I don’t have a monitor this would be a great addition so I can constantly view the feed. Please add ASAP!!!
I’ve written to customer support twice on this issue with no actual help from them. I have the battery powered outdoor Kami camera. It was easy to setup and shows a great image. However we have had no success in capturing motion at our house. Our son who walks out of the front door where the camera is posted and down to the mailbox. He is only on camera opening the front door upon his return. We have had multiple people walk on to our property only to be captured after standing at the front door for a period or time. This camera doesn’t have a “zone” and I’m not sure what makes it pick up some images. We have played with the settings and even have it set for the highest alerts. Today it missed my son walking to the front door until the door was opened beneath the camera. Yet, it showed the large fedex truck driving away earlier this afternoon. I don’t understand. We have a full charge on the batteries, an SD card installed and have adjusted the settings multiple times. I have had this camera less than 1 month. We only got this camera because we loved our indoor Yi camera. This Kami wireless camera is junk!! I’m sending this back for a refund immediately.
Used to love and recommend these cameras! Started with Yi outdoor cameras with audible motion alarms. These had built in AI to try and filter out only human detections. Kept adding now up to 8 both inside and outside. One update removed the ability to view more than one feed. Forcing you to pay for the cloud! I don’t need it! I have 256gb cards In all of them! Then they killed the ability for the outdoor cameras to detect people in the AI again forcing you to pay! It reverts to any motion! I tried the cloud trial and it’s useless anyway. The audible beeping alarms sound at every shadow and bug flying by! The new firmware that detects humans, animals and cars merely filters those items to only alert your phone to those items! However it beeps at every single movement of anything! Was a great feature to let someone know that they are being watched. Now the audible alarms are all turned off because the beeping all day and night drives everyone nutz! Used to be a great company and now they are gearing towards subscriptions and refuse to address issues to make the cameras better! Find another brand!!!!
Update: As of the latest version of the app on Mar. 3, 2020 (with the redesigned UI), the “new alert” dot no longer persists after viewing the alert, so that’s good. Notifications for the alerts now seem to appear promptly, so that’s even better. However, now the Home/Away setting doesn’t work. Upon returning home and switching the app to Home, the camera remains on and sends alerts when I enter the room. I have to go into the settings for the camera and manually switch it off. This is not a big inconvenience compared to tapping the Home button, but users should be aware that your camera may not be monitoring the house unless you manually turn it on, since tapping Away does not activate it (at least for me). Old review: I don’t have the issues that other reviewers have mentioned, however the app constantly tells me that there are alerts to view (by placing a dot over the Alerts button) when there are no new alerts. Sometimes tapping Alerts clears the dot and sometimes it takes more tries before it finally goes away. The bigger issue is that push notifications simply don’t work. I’ve only received one notification from the app, and it was days after the actual event where the camera noticed movement. With a delay like that, the camera cannot be used as an alarm for the home owner, only as an after-the-fact record of what happened (assuming that someone doesn’t unplug the camera and take it before it uploads its footage!).
Edit: this app has now taken to sending me two spam notifications per day in retaliation for not buying their most expensive subscription. Yet I am forced to endure this spam if i want to use the hardware I purchased. Edit: this app continues to abuse push notifications to send spam through the same channel as critical security alerts as of 6/24 This app abuses push notifications to send marketing spam you can’t opt out of, which is a violation of App Store policies. I frequently get notifications of motion, but when I go to load the video, it says that there is no video for that time. Sometimes it takes more than 5 minutes for the slow Kami Cloud to process videos, which defeats the purpose of a security camera. What am I even paying for? After the latest updates I can’t even view live video successfully. This company just keeps getting worse and worse.
I’ve been using Yi cameras for a few years. I had two of the minis and have just recently expanded to a dome cam, some more minis and a couple wireless indoor cameras. I’ve had great luck with the minis in fact I have just signed up for cloud service which I never had before. However, the indoor wireless camera refuses to pair properly. I’ve gone over and over with customer service trying to get it rectified. At this point I am asking to return the one indoor wireless camera that isn’t working in exchange for a new one that hopefully will. They have been very willing to work with me, but I disappoint it’s just a waste of time. Should I receive a new camera that works I will come back and edit this review.
It takes minutes to load at times, always at least 20-30 seconds which is NOT ideal for urgent situations. Many times that’s all that is needed for my son to fall out of his crib since I was waiting for the camera to load/connect. I’ve had this camera and app for more than 3 months and I’m really disappointed with how much money I put in to it (over $100, for the camera and cloud plan with all the “features”). At first, I loved the design and the idea of it all until I quickly realized how slow it runs, thus causing more stress. At that, it does not keep recordings from all times so when I need to playback something and it does not register or acknowledge there was movement I will not be able to view what exactly happened. It has potential but it not what it says unfortunately.
If you’re going to delay the viewing of my cameras with ads, then the cameras should be free. I do not appreciate displaying ads for cameras I’ve paid for. By the time I get through the ads, the event for the alert I’ve received has already passed. I am scared for not being able to view critical events right away, where each second counts. Update: And their response is to offer a discount on their premium subscription to remove the ads. What a shake-down! My Kasa and Tapo cams are ad free and works the same way. Buy those instead. (Sort the reviews by most recent and you’ll see how these cams used to be good. Now they are just money hungry. Yi and Kami are the same company so don’t buy Yi cameras either unless you want the same headache dealing with ads.)
I move a lot for work and have had several different doorbell cameras. The camera provides quality recording, but the motion sensor leaves a bit to be desired. It will pick up a car driving by on the street, but doesn’t start recording when a person is walking up my walkway until they ring the doorbell. I wake up most mornings to numerous motion detection notices that, so far, seem to be cars driving by in the dark, or I have ghosts that hang out on the front porch. I’ve tried adjusting the Detection Areas and Detection Range to no avail. If it hadn’t been free with my subscription to a monitoring plan I would have returned it.
I enjoy our home monitoring system in place through the Kami cameras and online streams. Able to watch home from a far and get notification of packages and mail delivered and left alone safely until we can pick up. Easy set up and easy connections to install to net and get it going. Yes I recommend the products. Only reason not 5 stars is I’ve had 2 of the cameras go off online and not connecting after so they was replaced but yet to do it again so we’ll see
I just purchased a Kami outdoor security camera. This camera is replacing my old wired yi camera. The camera said it comes with 30 day free cloud service I activated the free service plan but it says select camera to connect the plan to and it won’t let me select the camera it stays gray. I then tried to purchase the paid service plan upfront for $9.99 and the same thing happened it wouldn’t let me select a Camera to use. Now I have a free plan and a paid plan running concurrently for 30 days. I contacted customer support and still waiting for a response. Otherwise, the camera is easy to hook up and the picture quality is very good.
I use 4 different Kami and Yi cameras at home to augment my security system. Love the 6s quick alerts that it sends and also allows me to watch full videos. I like to watch the different rooms, front and back when I travel to see how the house and plants are doing. Like the new UI with single page for alerts and videos. The home/away mode function is a bit unclear, would like to get even fewer alerts when I am home.
Pros: Started with kami baby and ended up getting the doorbell too. I love having the baby monitor and entryway camera on the same app. Baby monitor is AWESOME especially the breathing check option. no complaints. Cons: sometimes the app lags or you have to close it out and reopen it. And the doorbell sometimes misses video like when we come home for example. But it's peace of mind and better than nothing maybe i need to do an Apple update or something
Horrible app! The cloud service isn’t much better. The app will say you have one uploaded video and yet if you manually scroll through the day there are many captured videos. Don’t count on seeing the same thing twice in the saved videos however. I had to go back and capture an incident and even though I knew the time stamp it was no longer available. It was within an hour of it happening so it should still be stored in the cloud I pay for. I have had this service over 6 years and the quality has gone to crap.
I’ve purchased 6 of these cameras over the past 6 years. Great price. Good tech. I needed something that wasn’t cloud — these have SD card on the local device. App was good. I’ve recommended to many friends. NOW they’ve introduced ad videos on app startup to push you into a cloud subscription. I have these for my children in case of emergencies. I bought them because I could access my local memory. But now I have to watch ads before I can see if my children are ok. Remove the ads on startup now! This is ridiculous. These cameras are going in the trash and I will never buy from this company again!
This is probably the best camera I’ve found, it’s got some very fun and neat features like the fish eye lens, active phone movement to look around the field of view, and the mic for talking to the dog when we’re out. If it wasn’t for the long and tedious setup, I’d put a full 5 stars. I’m no bill gates but I’ve setup my share of security systems before, but this one was the most stressful. But WELL worth the stress once it’s done.
I’ve had the camera in operation for probably 4-5 months. Battery life is excellent. Still have problem with camera not activating quickly enough after several adjustments. Sometimes cannot get identifiable shot of quickly moving subject. As for notifications, sometimes they mysteriously turn themselves off. In spite of the limitations, I was planning on purchasing another one for my garage. However, the big-box home improvement store I bought this one at has stopped selling them, which tells me something.
The app itself ok, acceptable interface. I purchased four webcams and now find this app is constantly pitching the monthly service. Multicam view doesn’t work without a subscription. Editing doesn’t work without a subscription. This feels really crappy as I spent over $100 on hardware that I think should come with a fully functional app. That’s what I expected. ***Update*** Got a stupid “oh no” developer response but contacting them doesn’t fix the problem of course. Not being able to see these cams via a web browser without paying a monthly fee is not a bug, it’s a feature. There is no point in buying these web cams unless you are willing to pay a monthly fee forever to get features expected on any web cam. See it’s called a ‘webcam’ because it’s supposed to WORK OVER THE WEB. Yours could be called ‘purposefully impotent horrible system that requires an expensive subscription to make basic functions work.’
We have had nothing but problems with this monitor and app. We purchased a two pack and slowly, but surely neither of our cameras work anymore. The connection where the plug goes into the actual camera has gotten loose on both the monitors, and it no longer stays connected for longer than a few hours. So we have no idea when our child is awake or needs us. We absolutely wasted money on this! it’s constantly dropping the connection, the cable insertion point is not tight enough to stay put, the whole thing is terrible. Please don’t buy this!
I have multiple Kami cameras and it is a great app experience. The SD card functionality works very well and there is no pay wall to use it. There are so many good features in the app. I especially like the low latency so when I go to live view I am actually seeing what happens in real time. I have had more expensive cameras in the past and they did not work as well as the Kami cameras.
Great quality. I got the 15 day plan. The only thing I wish was different was even tho it record 24/7 that it would still do like a motion detector so if your looking for a specific thing. U have a better time frame to find it. But all in all yu can still find it. Just takes a lil more time some times. But it was a god send when someone broke in my house with a gun on me.
If you are looking for a no subscription needed no hassle solution, you may want to stay away from this product. With a quality high speed SD card installed, there is still a consistent push to get you to switch to their cloud solution throughout the app. The playback functionality for events has a clunky cloud or SD card logic. SD card playback, is intermittent, and fails often, with advice blatantly highlighting using their cloud service as a solution.
Having these cameras at my house and also my grandmothers has brought so much peace to me when I’m not home and able to check on my dog kids. After my grandmas house got robbed a few year ago I put a camera in her home and to be able to know I can always have an extra eye to watch out on her is amazing! Thanks Kami Home
When I downloaded the Yi home it worked then after a year stopped working called customer service they asked me to upload kami app which made everything work great until a month ago that the app did some type of update and now the hands free doesn’t work. Which is one of the reason I got the cameras because I was able to talk to my mom which has dementia. I tried to call the customer service and they never answer.
Still has some glitches, like not recording or being able to see what just set off your camera. I’ve had a Yi camera for a few years now and I just bought two more. Overall, I’m happy with my purchases. One of the new cameras has a very low microphone sensitivity unlike my older one which is very loud and picks up outdoor sounds perfectly.
I think it used to be good , now as May 2023 , it’s not good at all !!
I have Yi home or Kamy camera as they are called now for almost 8 years . For 8 years I didn’t have problem opening the app to see my cameras , may be minors here and there because of no internet connection or whatever , but it never had me waiting for more than 30 seconds for a failing to open the app . I’m so so disappointed of the app right now . I have tried opening it the app fro differents , uninstalling and installing again , logging in and out several times , but still failed to open .
Can you help with this problem I use this app to make sure my family is safe every morning when I have to leave for work really early it lets me see they got into the vehicle safely and are on the way to start there day but now I can’t check on the because all it says is failed to load. Please help
App is no longer showing previews or back play. I contacted support and they wanted to place blame on my router - yet, this is a “known issue”. The live stream works just fine - but my router is the issue. I deleted all cameras and reinstalled and for ten mins the app was working properly. After ten mins it reverted back to no longer allowing me to use the playback feature or to see a screenshot on the “activity” tab. Hopefully they resolve this issue sooner than later or I will be demanding a refund on all four cameras and taking my business elsewhere.
I pay for their service and after the last update, camera notifications are too slow. I’m downstairs and one of my kids will let themselves in and I won’t get a notification until they’re inside. Usually about a minute later which is too late if it’s supposed to be a security alert. I want to know before someone is in my house, not after. It was instant before. Now there’s a long lag and sometimes no alert at all.
I love my Kami home camera. I am using it for a monitor in my daughter’s room. My only issue with the app is that when I click on “cloud” to view earlier events, I cannot seem to get back to the live view without quitting out of the app and going back in. Not a huge deal but kind of annoying. (Could also be user error but I just can’t figure out how to do it!)
I bought this camera for our baby’s nursery monitor. It worked great for a long time and I even recommended it to several other families. Now, all of a sudden recently I have to watch adds before I can open the camera to see my child. Some of the adds aren’t even in English so I have no idea how to skip through. I wish I had bought something else and probably will. I shouldn’t have to suddenly pay of subscription. That’s not how this device was advertised in the first place.
What used to be an excellent product has been destroyed by ads
I have a total of 12 cameras through YI Home. I’m in the process of throwing all of them away due to the most intrusive ads I’ve seen on a security camera ever. Such a shame. I used to recommend these cameras to everyone looking for reliable and good value. I will no longer do that. I should have listened to everyone who kept saying this company is not to be trusted. A full page ad with full volume is beyond trashy even for a company that provides inexpensive cameras.
Pretty useful but can be expensive for what you get
On top of buying the cameras need to pay to have more than a single camera on your account. Can’t look at both cameras at the same time. Maybe add multitasking mode to have two app instances open to at least see two cameras
Please allow the app to utilize the Dark Mode feature of iOS. When checking a camera at night, the app is extremely bright with the white background. Also, for a security app, you should assume that your users may have an urgent need to view their camera. Instead of getting to launch the app and quickly load my camera, I must first click through an advertisement for one of your services or devices before I can get to my camera.
I purchased 4 cameras over the past year. They were inexpensive and worked well. The interface with my phone made it easy to monitor when I traveled. However Kami has pulled the scam. Now the Cameras don’t work unless I pay the annual fee of close to $150 each!!!! This was never disclosed up front. Beyond angry. Shame on me, I fell for the bait and switch. From low cost to bend over. They have collected a lot of data on me. Unless you like being scammed I strongly suggest you NOT use this product.
Both Kami and Yi Home apps are the same. Both are Turing to claim the firmware needs updated for all my cameras. The current firmware is for 2020 and 2019. The update they’re trying to make me install is from 2018! Both apps only allow me to see alerts, scroll thru ale arts and doesn’t not allow me move the camera- there’s no controls anymore!?!?! The Yi IOT app works perfect and shows the firmware is up to date on all my devices. Because of this issue, I’m sending back 6 cameras I’ve recently purchased.
I have now 3 different camera systems. All have their pluses and minuses. The Kami app is a nice mix of Cloud and memory card monitoring. Easy and quick ability to view past saved videos make this interface a really well done app.
Stay far away from Kami and Yi home. The cameras are not that good. They hardly ever capture motion. Good luck with customer service because nobody’s ever available on live chat and nobody’s ever available when you try calling. If you decide to cancel the easiest thing to do is just go and remove your credit card and block them with your bank from charging you because you’ll never get responses from them and they won’t follow through.
I will never do business with this company again. This is their response after sending in all of the requested documentation for a dead camera 3 months after purchase. “Thank you for contacting Kami customer support. We are very sorry that we cannot issue a refund/replacement... We're very sorry but we're unable to help.” Horrible horrible dishonest support. My product even says it comes with a 1 year warranty. 0 care or effort to fix the defective camera. Stay away.
While this app is a big improvement - the one sole issue - being able to play from the localized memory card - is not working well. With this feature unavailable to see past days, the app is defaulted to be a 6 second player and for camera configuration. While performance improvements are clear - being able to play past days from the localized memory would make this easily a 5 star app.
This app and service is the definition of unreliable. Major things like recording motion will just stop working for weeks at a time. Support is never any help. I finally canceled my paid options because they never worked and had to file a dispute with PayPal to get my money back after support refused to refund me despite not providing the service I had paid for. This is a shady company that simply doesn’t have the capabilities they promise.
I really enjoy the video quality and sound of this camera. The app has some pretty versatile options although I’m sure it could run a bit faster. All in all it gets the job done. Would like to see more options or plans for video storage.
I have worked with Kami for over eight years now. Anytime, rarely happens, that I have a question or need to buy a new plan, the staff who work at Kami are awesome! Very professional, know the products and have great ideas on how to save me money. Have to love that! 😊
The Kami camera system works great for my needs. The interior cameras can be located and configured to see areas and send alerts. The doorbell camera doesn’t connect quickly enough to use as a regular doorbell but records movement for later reviews if needed.
The app doesn’t work correctly. Since last year that they started to do update on the app it hasn’t been the same. Cameras stop working on their own and then fix themselves sometimes on their own or it just doesn’t work. Sad I might have to find another brand I have 19-21 cameras and have gotten so many family and friends to buy the and they worked great for year and now they don’t work like they used to.
Only wish YIHome/KAMI would bring back the outdoor wired camera again. 5-8-24 Received a thank you for my review from the Developer, only thing is, there was no direct response to my question/comment about bring the wired YIHome/KAMI Outdoor Camera back to Amazon/YIHome Store??? JayDee
It’s a bad camera system you can’t get technical help from nowhere you can’t get help on the app when you buy a subscription to the cloud you can’t get help I just do not recommend this product you can’t get help nowhere they won’t call you there’s no numbers to call geez I can’t believe these are even on the market the batteries run down fast and then when you charge it back up you have to re-establish to your Internet
You get a notification that motion detects. You tap on the notification and brings you to the camera. Camera says no sd card available... You go back to live view. Stuck at 1% loading for 10 seconds. Stuck at 99% for additional 10 seconds. Sometimes fails completely and I have to unplug the power and plug it back in... if there was an actual intruder. I’d be dead already. Loading times need to be fixed. Note: I am on fiber optic network with nighthawk router. My old wyze cam loads faster than kami... I jumped over to kami for the 30 day cloud 24/7. I like the cameras starlight night vision. Only works if there is slight ambient light. The app needs serious improvement. It should not take longer than a library computer to boot up.
The app does not have a “background audio on” functionality, which other baby monitor apps/devices do have. The Nanit app lets you lock your iphone and/or use other apps while leaving the camera’s audio playing in the background. Thus to monitor your baby you have to stay on the app and stop your phone from locking/turning off. Also some error messages show up in Chinese instead of English.
I’ve had to reinstall the app because of communication issues, After using the app for several months it freezes in a loading screen and never comes up, the only solution is to reinstall the app. Same issue happens with the Kami app. Besides that everything is ok.
Kami Home makes it easy and practical to protect and stay connected with the things that matter--your family, pets, and the things you love. With just a few simple steps, you can control your Kami connected devices in one place. Stay tuned for our growing family of smart products for the home! Kami Home app gives you access to live footage of your home 24/7 and sends activity alerts to notify you of any unusual motion detected activity. Keep tabs on your nanny day and night, check in on your pets, or simply monitor your house. Kami Indoor Camera The first product in our smart home lineup combines advanced AI features with full room visibility and a modern design: • Best in class 360 degree pan and 150 degree tilt to see more of the room • Physical eyelid cover design for privacy on demand • Automatic tracking detects people or large pets for smarter alerts • Free 24-hour motion-captured video storage (and up to 30 days of video history with a paid subscription to Kami Cloud Auto-renewing subscriptions info: -Subscription name：Kami Cloud Entry(Yearly) 1 cam, 7 days history, motion -Length of subscription: 365 days -Price of subscription: $29.99 per year -Subscription name：Kami Cloud CVR(Yearly) -Length of subscription: 365 days -Price of subscription: $59.99 per year -Subscription name：Kami Cloud Standard(Yearly) -Length of subscription: 365 days -Price of subscription: $79.99 per year -Subscription name：Kami Cloud Plus(Yearly) -Length of subscription: 365 days -Price of subscription: $129.99 per year -Subscription name: Kami Cloud Entry (Monthly) -Length of subscription: 30 days -Price of subscription: $2.99 per month -Subscription name：Kami Cloud CVR (Monthly) -Length of subscription: 30 days -Price of subscription: $7.99 per month -Subscription name：Kami Cloud Standard (Monthly) -Length of subscription: 30 days -Price of subscription: $9.99 per month -Subscription name：Kami Cloud Standard (Plus) -Length of subscription: 30 days -Price of subscription: $14.99 per month -Payment: The user confirms the purchase and pays it with their iTunes account. -Cancel renewal：If you need to cancel the renewal, please manually turn off the automatic renewal function in Itunes / Apple ID settings management 24 hours before the current subscription expire -Renew：Apple ITunes account will be debited within 24 hours before expiration, and the subscription cycle will be postponed for one month after the deduction is successful -Precautions：After renewing the subscription automatically, the service is free for the first month, and the trial period ends from the day of purchase to the day of next month, and the charge is automatically deducted -Terms of use：https://api.yitechnology.com/home/terms_of_use?location=USA&lang=zh-CN?location=USA&lang=zh-CN -Privacy policy：https://api.yitechnology.com/home/privacy_agreement?location=USA&lang=zh-CN?location=USA&lang=zh-CN -YI Cloud Service Agreement：https://api.yitechnology.com/homecamera/cloud_agreement_ios.html - A functional link to the Terms of Use (EULA) Automatic Renewal Service Agreement：https://app.yitechnology.com/#/YihomeAutoRenewalAgreement
