Webcam for Watching Beardies

A while ago, someone spoke highly of a camera they have pointed at their dragon tank so they can log in and watch their dragon from work. I forgot what the name of it was, and would like to set up a camera so my students can log in and see Figment - he's going to be our Virtual Class Pet this year, since live animals are prohibited this year (and possibly into the future). Can someone remind me what type of camera to get?

There are a lot of good options. Something small that fits in the enclosure or right next to it easily is probably a good bet. If you don't want to set up your own camera server (more secure) then I'd go with a known brand like Nest or Wyze. I have an amcrest camera in Darwin's enclosure that is isolated from the internet and connected to a Blue Iris server which adds a layer of protection (at the expense of simplicity). Either way you go, be sure to change the default passwords that come with it to protect your network against attack and set a non-administrative account for people to watch from.

CooperDragon":2wipxukj said:

There are a lot of good options. Something small that fits in the enclosure or right next to it easily is probably a good bet. If you don't want to set up your own camera server (more secure) then I'd go with a known brand like Nest or Wyze. I have an amcrest camera in Darwin's enclosure that is isolated from the internet and connected to a Blue Iris server which adds a layer of protection (at the expense of simplicity). Either way you go, be sure to change the default passwords that come with it to protect your network against attack and set a non-administrative account for people to watch from.

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Hoo boy... I didn’t even think of network security! Is it hard to set up a camera server? I don’t want to expose my network to hackers... yeesh. This may be less simple than I thought!

It's not too hard to set up a camera server, however network security and server configurations are part of my job so I look at it from that perspective. If you aren't familiar with it, then your best bet is to just go with a known brand like nest. Your camera will connect to a server over the internet that others can access to view your feed (which is what you're looking for in this case). Just be sure to change the default passwords and create a guest account and you should be in good shape.

CooperDragon":1215jyec said:

It's not too hard to set up a camera server, however network security and server configurations are part of my job so I look at it from that perspective. If you aren't familiar with it, then your best bet is to just go with a known brand like nest. Your camera will connect to a server over the internet that others can access to view your feed (which is what you're looking for in this case). Just be sure to change the default passwords and create a guest account and you should be in good shape.

Click to expand...

Okay, sounds good to me. I shot off an e-mail to my very techy brother-in-law, too, so he can weigh in on this - but I'll probably go with Wyze, because Consumer Reports gave them a good review. Thanks for the clarification!

Sounds good. That's probably the best way to go.

For reference, if he can help you set it up - I use an Amcrest webcam that is set to a static IP and all inbound and outbound traffic to it is blocked by my firewall. I have a Blue Iris server configured on the network and that connects to the camera and handles recording and broadcasting. I configure limited access to the server via non standard accounts set up and it broadcasts a webpage on a non-standard port. In this scenario you would give your students a link and limited server account to use (preferrably using a dynamic dns name or domain name instead of an IP) to access that webpage to view the camera.