wireless camera viewable on web recommendation?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Was wondering if anyone had advice- I’m looking for a standalone (meaning not directly hooked to a computer) wireless camera to use for remote monitoring- nothing sinister, just to keep an eye on my tortoises when I’m not home. I bought one, a Foscam F18910W which looks awesome but OMG the configuration is ridiculous. You have to set it up first plugged directly into your router (which I don’t have easy access to), do all kinds of stuff THEN if all that works do another whole process to set it up wirelessly. The instructions and software look 10+ years old too. Seriously?

I just want something like my printer that detects my network, enter the password and voila, it’s working. I have been looking on Amazon and finding some but was wondering if anyone had experience with these that could offer some guidance. I’d like to be able to access from the web/my smart phone and would love to spend around $100 since it’s just for a pretty simple task and no need for anything super fancy. At some point I will move it to another location so simple set up is really ideal.

Any input is appreciated. I’m using a Macbook Pro if that matters and I have electric power near where I want to place it but not ethernet connection to my router.

2

All I can tell you is I’ve been into computers since before the IBM PC came out, am the go-to tech guy for all my friends and family, and I recently had to set one of these up and it was a challenge to say the least (although I did eventually succeed).

The problem is they are still kind of a niche product. And an even bigger problem related to that is that in order to view them over the internet you have to make some seriously tricky modifications to your home network’s security settings, something which the industry has spent the last ten years making more and more secure and thus harder, not easier, to do.

I can’t give you any specific recommendations, the two I set up were FOSCAMs and they seem typical. I will say that I had to set them up thru a Verizon FiOS router and that turned out to be extra difficult. Easiest way is pay a security company to do it for you, but I don’t think you want to spend that kind of money. There are lots & lots of videos on YouTube on how to set these things up, check those out. Not only in regards to which brand of camera but in terms of which ISP and/or brand of router you have.