Email service best suited for use with IP cameras

[blakem 0]

Is there a free email service better suited toward IP camera notifcations or snapshots? My problem is that my camera is sending snapshots several times a day to my yahoo email, but after a week yahoo suspects my email has been hacked and locks my account so I stop getting messages from my camera. I tried gmail as an alternative, but I think their spam filter is even worse. When I setup gmail on my camera the camera locks up and stops responding to the web gui or video feed. So is there an email service that will not flag my cameras snapshot emails as spam and force me to change my password weekly?

[buellwinkle 0]

This happens no matter who you use if you send too many emails and if you are using video motion detection this could be a problem. I use PIR motion detection for cameras that alert me and it works well as I rarely get false alerts.

 

The other choice is to go with a camera with app based alerts like AVTech. You install a smartphone app (IOS, Android, Blackberry) and it alerts you near instantly (much better than email alert) that there's motion, it uses a PIR motion detector and plays back the video that triggered the event on your phone. You can then view live video and previously recorded video (if the model has an SD card).

 

I only use this camera for alerts, not for my normal recorded surveillance since it's so good at it but I prefer other cameras for overall home security. So if someone enters one of my vacation properties, I'm notified right away. If I want to view my other cameras, I can do so in traditional ways.

[GMaster1 0]

Your ISP has SMTP servers you can use. They authenticate by either your account username/password, or by IP verification (to make sure you are a customer). This is how many commercial office fax/scan/copiers are configured.

 

You can also create your own SMTP server using a PC in your home. There are a ton of free SMTP programs that will just sit idle and run in the background of your computer.

[buellwinkle 0]

Many ISP's including the big ones like AT&T also will block emails you send if it thinks you are sending them to frequently. The best bet may be as you suggested, create your own SMTP server.

[kifaru 0]

I previously used camera motion detection & got several hundred emails on a daily basis on my Gmail account. After switching to PIR motion detection, that pretty much solved my problem.

[buellwinkle 0]

Exactly, why would you want so many alert emails, it's like the boy that cried wolf, you'll desensitize yourself to the alerts.

[blakem 0]

I guess my situation is I am sending a single snapshot when there is motion to one email address, but I also send ~100 or so snapshots to another email for archive incase my nvr gets stolen I still have something. Usually I get around 3-4 emails a day and it works well until there is too much activity in a short amount of time. Each of those emails is around 15Mb each so it may be hitting a bandwidth limit, but it could just be too many emails in a short time period. In any case since I am using the yahoo smtp it locks the account and I never know if its locked or there is just no activity.

 

I think my best option will be to setup my own smtp server on my nvr pc. I will use it as the primary smtp on the camera and use the yahoo smtp as the secondary in case my pc goes down or missing. If I send too many emails with my smtp it may just go into the spam folder on the other end but I can deal with that. Thank you all for the replies.

[51cent 8]

Blakem, why not use ftp for the online storage? You can basically upload as many times as you want.

[blakem 0]

Blakem, why not use ftp for the online storage? You can basically upload as many times as you want.

I suppose I was thinking Gmail has 10Gb free email service. I thought most free online ftp services were only 1Gb unless you pay for more. Less storage would work, but I would need to login more frequently to purge the old and free up space right?. I am open to suggestions, my goal is I just would like some offsite redundancy that is reliable.

[buellwinkle 0]

Don't know what camera brand you use, but many like ACTi and Dahua let you FTP video events and the FTP server can be anywhere in the world assuming you have the internet bandwidth to support it. Also, you can put an NAS in your attic if you want and FTP to that so if your NVR get's stolen you have a hidden FTP backup.