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Ultivon E100 review: Battery-powered surveillance camera with motion detection and alarm
Ultivon E100 surveillance camera
pros and cons
- Compact and unobtrusive
- Rechargeable battery
- Easy-to-configure app
- Sensitive to Wi-Fi signal strength
The Ultivon E100 security camera is a hand-sized, battery-powered camera that can be located practically anywhere
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For such a small camera, the Ultivon E100 surveillance camera has a lot of features. Equipped with a 6,000mAh battery, this camera can be located anywhere at all. You do not need a power supply to monitor your surroundings -- just a Wi-Fi signal.
The camera body is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and fits easily in the hand. Its dimensions are 93 x 65 x 38mm and it weighs 191g. Yet, inside the camera, there is a PIR motion detection sensor and an 080p HD camera. It also has a two-way microphone.
To configure the camera, first charge the battery. It takes around seven hours to fully charge the E100 camera.
Install the Adorcam app from the app store and connect the camera to your app through the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network. The app easily connects to the camera using a QR code and the app has some useful features.
Helpful voice prompts tell you that you should see a red flashing light when the camera is ready to connect to Wi-FI, and how far to hold the camera away from the app-generated QR code to connect the camera to the app.
The app also has details on how to mount the camera onto the outdoor bracket and fix it to the wall. You should mount the camera 7ft to 10ft high for security.
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This camera is not cloud-enabled. It uses an SD card to store its images which are then accessed over Wi-FI. The SD card sits in the rear of the camera, protected by a silicone cover, which is not fixed to the camera and could get lost.
The cover protects the power switch, the USB charging port, and the SD card, and is easy to access at the rear of the camera. At IP65-rated, the camera is weatherproof but not waterproof, providing you have replaced the silicone cover after you have charged the camera
The app advises you to take the camera and phone to the location to test the strength of the WI-FI to assess whether the location is a suitable spot for Wi-Fi coverage.
I found that, when initially configuring the camera at my desk in the office, the Wi-Fi signal varied from good (not recommended to mount the camera) to great (recommended to mount the camera) -- even though the router was less than three feet from the camera and mobile device.
The app settings let you switch the camera on or off, turn on night vision automatically, and flip the indicator light on and off to make the camera unobtrusive.
Each camera has a power manager setting which you can configure for optimal battery life, optimal surveillance, or customize the recording length and types of detection.
Optimal battery life will only record human motion with video clip lengths up to 10 seconds, whereas the optimal surveillance setting will record video clips of up to 30 seconds and will record everything that moves the camera.
Other settings let you tweak the sensor sensitivity, audio, alarm, and microphone volumes. You can also enable home, away, or disarmed mode. The Away settings can be configured to record video, push a notification to your phone, and sound an alarm.
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The alarm is very loud for the size of the camera and will activate as soon as the PIR detects any movement in the camera. Audio is clear with little distortion and few dropped words. To speak through the camera's microphone, view the live feed and hold the microphone icon to talk to the person at the camera end.
In use, I found that viewing the live feed drains the battery of the camera -- as does recording longer video clips. Night vision is good and the camera will detect movement up to about 30 feet.
It is a pain disconnecting the camera to charge it every few days, and in high movement areas, which caused many videos to be saved to the card, I had to charge the camera each day.
However, the app has an indicator level for the strength of the Wi-Fi and battery level, which you need to watch so you can charge it up accordingly.
All in all, the Ultivon E100 camera is a nice compact camera that does not rely on the cloud for video storage and can be mounted almost anywhere.
Keep an eye on the battery levels to make certain you are around to charge the battery when it gets low and you can relax knowing that the Ultivon E100 batterypowered security camera is monitoring your area day and night and sending motion detection alerts to your phone.