| | |  | | Home » Archerfish Solo Wireless Intelligent Video Surveillance System with Built-In DVR | | | | | | | Description: | | Archerfish Solo is an all-in-one video surveillance system: outdoor/indoor 802.11 wireless camera, DVR, Intelligent Surveillance Technology, and a personal web portal for online system management and 24/7 viewing of live and recorded video for free from any computer. It's different from other video surveillance systems because it understands what it sees. You tell Archerfish what to detect and what to ignore, so you only get mobile alerts that are important to you. No more wasted hours watching empty scenes or meaningless motion alerts. When it comes to watching over your home, business and family, don't settle for anything less than Archerfish. | | | Features: | |
• Intelligent Surveillance Technology, newer than motion detection, alerts on specific activities - like a person, car, or other objects - not just motion. Reduces false alerts.
• Three video options include: live, recorded (DVR), and customizable alerts. View live and DVR video online for free from any computer. Mobile access to video available for iPhone, iPod Touch or Android devices.
• Customizable video alerts triggered on user-defined activities in up to three detection zones per camera; can be sent to any number of mobile phones or email addresses
• System expands to unlimited number of Archerfish cameras in one or more locations, managed from a single online account. No software needed to operate.
• Indoor/outdoor, low light, color, 802.11b/g wireless camera measuring just 4.5" high with built-in Intelligent Surveillance Technology and DVR (2GB microSD card included, expandable to 32GB). H.264 compression with choice of CIF or VGA resolution.
• All-in-one system, with automatic tamper detection, just needs broadband Internet service and wireless router to work.
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 8.25 inches | | Product Width:
| 4.65 inches | | Product Height:
| 8.85 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.0 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.8 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 4.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 43 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 43 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 59 found the following review helpful:
 So Far So GoodAug 26, 2010
By Butternut Farm
I'd been looking a long time for a product like this... a wireless IP surveillance camera with decent motion detection and email alerts. There really aren't too many such animals at present. The Archerfish is one of a kind from what I've seen. The technology behind this product (streaming video analysis and selective motion detection) is running on the Archerfish servers, not inside the camera itself. That's really the essence of how it works, and unfortunately it doesn't come cheap. The camera is pricey to start, plus there's a $5/month subscription fee. All that said, I think the product and service deliver as advertised, and I give it good marks so far.
The online "SmartPortal" where you view live video, configure event triggers, and view event clips is easy to use and well-documented. The device was simple to initially configure. There is definitely port forwarding involved with the setup. If your wireless router has UPnP enabled, it might configure the port forwarding on its own, but be prepared to access your router's interface. There is sufficient documentation on this. My only hiccup was when I placed the camera in its final position (mounted on the side of a barn overlooking the driveway and back door), I had a problem with the signal strength on my wireless router. The dhcp process is particularly sensitive to a weak signal. I ended up moving the router closer to the back of the house, and that solved the problem. The device does not support 802.11.n at present, just 802.11.b/g.
I've only been using it for a few days, but I'm getting very good event detection. I've had only one false positive so far... our cat got picked up as a "person" event. I will say that the camera placement is really critical to performance. Before you buy, carefully review that page where they go through the best practices, and think about where exactly you'll be mounting the camera. If you can't meet most of those, especially the distance (field of view) and the left-to-right motion, then you should lower expectations a bit. Also, keep in mind the minimum operating temperature is 14F. Being in New England, I'm going to have to move it indoors from Dec-March.
70 of 75 found the following review helpful:
 Cool camera that anyone can setup and install!Jul 21, 2010
By Lori Harrod
I bought this camera because I thought it had a unique look to it. And, though it is certainly unique, it's everything else about this camera that makes it worth posting a customer review......
The entire installation process - from opening the box to getting video notifications sent to my email - took less than 30 minutes.
Despite the fact that the camera communicates through my router there were zero networking challenges. Set it up by plugging it in to the router (the connector and cable are part of the camera assembly), run an easy piece of software and it's instantly part of your network.
Assembly was a snap and you can easily adjust the viewing direction and angle of the camera after you've got the camera mounted where you want it.
In my case I've mounted the camera on a shed in my back yard and have it pointed back towards the house. It's at least 100' from from where my router sits - not to mention that it's communicating through a number of walls.
I have very little patience or interest in handyman type projects - even for me this one was a no-brainer.
I would strongly recommend this camera to anyone - regardless of technical or handyman type skill!
29 of 31 found the following review helpful:
 Good for a few weeksOct 05, 2010
By REGINA WATSON
I bought the archerfish solo and mounted it outside. I had a few problems setting it up but the archerfish tech service was really great helping. They can even with your appoval menipulate your system. For the first few weeks it was great. I was very impressed. The last two weeks i get at least 20 false events a day saying people or vehicles show up. I check the event that was on the video and not a person or vehicle in sight. I would not mind a few a day but 20 is a bit much. I dont want to get to the point i do not pay attention when i get an event sent to my email and my iphone. I do like the fact that i can get on a computer anywhere and see my house. Just wish they would fix whatever is causing the false events
33 of 39 found the following review helpful:
 Save your money - this is not ready for prime time yetMar 23, 2011
By William W. Davis
"famousdavis"
QUICK SUMMARY: The Solo camera and web portal are simply not ready for a production release. Save your money and look for alternatives. (Be sure to read my UPDATED comments at the bottom of this review).
Background: This is my second home surveillance system, and although this product touts to be better than the 1950s-era technology my existing system uses, at least my existing system works reasonably well. By contrast, the feature-rich Archerfish Solo camera promises more than it can deliver, and has its own limitations, too.
Installation and Setup: After opening the package up, it's pretty easy to get things going -- IF you are familiar with home networking. The "Getting Started" brochure explains the essential steps of installing Solo to your network.
Step 1 - Add Solo To Your Network. To do that, you plug-in Solo to the power supply and then plug-in Solo directly to an ethernet connection on your router or network switch. Then, you download a setup wizard from the Archerfish website and run it from any networked PC in your home. The process is pretty simple BUT you need to know the type of wireless security your router is running: WPA? WPA-TKIP? WPA-PSK? WEP? If you don't know what these acronoms stand for, you'll likely be stumped when you're asked to explain how your wireless network is secured.
Step 2 - Assemble the Solo camera. To do this, you insert a 2GB miniSD card into the side of Solo, and then attach Solo to an installation base. Trouble here is that the base is made of two big pieces of plastic that won't stay together until you screw-in the whole assembly into a wall or ledge somewhere. Unlike my old surveillance system, you can't just set the Solo on a desktop or other piece of furniture -- the camera will topple over and the base assembly will disassemble if it's not screwed into something. I also disliked having to build this base assembly by removing a rubber gasket, connecting a power cord to the camera. Why can't the base assembly snap together? I wasn't impressed with the plastic build, either. Overtighten the base, and the plastic will crack. My old surveillance system uses metal bases for the cameras that are half the size of the plastic base that comes with Solo.
Step 3 - Install Solo. This is easy. Just screw three wood screws through the plastic base into wood somewhere on your house (my location is above the garage door). Don't overtighten those screws! Note, though, that the power suppply cord is only about 10' long, and so installation is limited by having to figure out how to deal with the power cord to the camera. Although this camera is wirelessly connected to your network, it has a wired power cord! You can install the base on a ceiling, wall, or ledge. Once installed, it's easy to manipulate the camera angle.
Step 4 - Register Solo. Here's where you create a new account with Archerfish. The unpleasantries here include having to offer up your credit card information for a "free" basic account, and reading your Solo's serial number from the "Getting Started" guide where the font size is so small as to be almost illegible. I had to enter the serial number three times before getting the numbers and letters correctly, because the alphanumeric string is so tiny. Also, I had to go through this whole registration process twice because, during the first attempt, a website glitch occurred that lost everything I had already entered into it during the multi-step registration process.
Using the Solo Camera and Web Portal
Once I setup my account, I tried out the features of the web portal and camera. You can see your camera's live video feed over the Internet from any browser (once you've logged in to your Archerfish account). That's pretty neat! However, setting up the zones was frustrating, as the web portal only let me create one set of events that included all three zones. In other words, I can't create one type of event for Zone 1 and a second event for Zone 2 on the same day/time of the week. The web form used to make these entries will suddenly have dropdown controls (where you choose days and times) that have no options from which to choose. Not ready for prime time!!
More frustrations: The DVR feature works, but I can't extract files even though that feature supposedly exists. It gives me an error, but no error code or reason. I tried creating a support ticket with Archerfish through their website, but the web form that collects information from me fails to submit the support request -- the browser just goes blank, and if you hit the Back button, everything you typed is now lost. The event recognition feature -- the killer feature that separates this camera from 1950s-era technology -- only worked for me during the daytime hours, not at night (even with my well-lit porch light on). And even the event recognition during the day was spotty at best in its ability to do what it's supposed to do. Sometimes it recognized people, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it mistook a neighborhood cat for a person. I definitely wouldn't trust my home surveillance needs to technology that is so unpredictable and unreliable.
And it strikes me as bad design that someone can walk up to my Archerfish camera and remove the miniSD card and all the stored video from the camera's built-in DVR. (You wouldn't have that risk if you placed the camera so high you'd need a long ladder to reach it). The website portal will only store 50MB of video -- hardly any video at all, although if the event recognition feature worked properly, that 50MB would be the important video you'd want to see.
So, here's how I sum things up:
WHAT I LIKE:
- Best feature: Live video streaming over the Internet to any browser!
- Wired or wireless connection to your network (your choice)
- The video created by the camera had good colors that didn't need any adjustment
- The videos were reasonably clear and sharp for surveillance quality
- Good low-light performance (I can see outside at night with just street light only)
- Configuring and installing the camera wasn't too bad (but I'm an IT professional)
- The concept of event recognition is great (the implementation left a lot to be desired, though)
WHAT I DO **NOT** LIKE:
- The Event recognition feature just didn't work well. If this feature worked well, I'd bump up the star rating to at least 3-stars.
- Couldn't export files from the camera's DVR
- Couldn't create a support ticket through the web portal
- The camera's base assembly is too large and stupidly designed
- Very limited features to configure the camera (such as choosing frame rate), or how to be notified of events (you can only send an email to one registered email account).
- No infrared capability to record in zero-light conditions. The instructions make it clear that this camera will only work well in well-lit conditions, so you'd have to leave outside lights on all night for the Solo to work properly -- that's not energy efficient.
- Requiring users to present credit card information for a "free" basic account, and forcing them to get "free" premium subscription features for three months with no opt-out choice (you risk forgetting to cancel this free subscription and getting billed later on).
CONCLUSION: This is a pricey surveillance camera. At this cost, all the features purported by the manufacturer should work, and work very well and very reliably. They don't. I like the concept behind Solo, so I hope Archfisher continues to fix what's wrong and improve Solo so it fulfills all the hype. Until then, though, I do NOT recommend the Solo surveillance camera.
***** UPDATE as of April 27, 2011 *****
So I've used this camera for about a month now, and have gotten acquainted with its functions and features. I initially rated this camera 2-stars, but I'm now giving it 2.5-stars (but Amazon doesn't allow half-star ratings, so I'm leaving my initial rating intact at 2-stars). Why? Because now that I've fiddled with it by changing its installation and making a device configuration setting, it's doing a better job at doing home surveillance -- but it's still not that great.
A key camera configuration setting (for me, anyway) was changing the "Duration" setting for this camera on the web portal. I had set it to 20 seconds, thinking it would show 20 seconds of video for any event it recognized. Turns out, that setting doesn't control how long the video clips show (it defaults to 10 seconds without a way to change that), rather, that camera "Duration" setting determines for how long something has to be moving around in the camera's field-of-vision before the camera recognizes it as an "event." When I changed this setting from 20 seconds to 5 seconds, it registered a lot more events, and I had a lot fewer missed events.
BUT -- the the event recognition technology just isn't that good! Now, I'm getting several dozen motion events consisting of a cloud passing in front of the sun, which causes shadows to appear and disappear. Or the wind blowing a tree. Or nothing apparent at all. The event recognition technology is in its infancy, and it still just isn't that smart, or good. So, I have more events to look at, which includes more of what I'm interested in, but also more of what I don't want to see. It's noteworthy, too, that the events often don't recognize a vehicle when a car drives up, don't recognize a person when a person walks up, or, sometimes, it says it sees a car when there is none, or it sees a person when there is no one there. It's very dicey.
Even with all these warts, I do find it useful to see what's going on in my home using the web portal which can show live video streaming over the Internet, or event clips that it's registered throughout the day. So, the overall solution is okay, but I definitely don't like the overall package. And I'm not at all convinced that, after the free 3-month "premium" web portal features expire, it'll be worth the money to pay a monthly service fee to continue using those web features.
***** UPDATE as of May 5, 2011 *****
Another reason to dislike Solo. Yesterday, my Solo inexplicably dropped connection to my network. My Archerfish web account recognized this event because it logged it into the event log, but Archerfish didn't bother emailing me a notification saying that there was a problem with my Solo. So, for the last day, while I'm thinking my Solo is watching my property, instead, it's not -- there have been no recorded events on the web portal to view for the last day. I discovered the problem today when I logged into my web account and saw there were no recorded events in the last 24 hours (there always are such events to review). I had to unplug/re-plug the camera to get things working properly again. (There were no other problems in my home network, btw). Now, imagine this scene when you're on a long vacation, and you're not home to just unplug/re-plug in the problematic camera? I'm back to a 2-stars once more, moving closer to 1-star.
This is a very pricey camera which promises more than it can reliably deliver.
15 of 16 found the following review helpful:
Wasn't able to make it workDec 13, 2010
By Jason Knapp
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make this device work. I'm a pretty technically sophisticated guy (formerly in IT), with a good understanding of networking and wifi. But my Solo kept losing the connection with my Apple Airport Extreme. To get it back, I had to take it back off the wall, connect it to my computer, and reconfigure it. Even moving the Airport near the camera did not help. After spending an hour or so with tech support, we weren't able to solve the problem and I returned it to Amazon. Maybe it was a defective unit, but since I bought it for ease of use and wanted it specifically before an impending family trip, I didn't bother trying another unit.
Another thing to be careful of: To get all of the features you must sign up for a premium service for $5.99 per month. Even though I returned the device, after the 90 day trial ended they started charging me $5 per month (the difference was explained as resulting from the device being deleted from my account--not sure why they would still charge in this case). I accept partial responsibility since I hadn't thought to explicitly go and cancel the subscription. However, when I did, their web portal wouldn't let me cancel because it wanted to update the device, which was impossible since it had been returned. A call to customer service got the account canceled and charges reversed--so they did a good job there--just be careful.
See all 43 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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