Piper nv All-in-One Home Security Bundle with Video Monitoring Camera and two Door/Window Sensors, Black

I spent TOO much time researching available products for home security, but that’s one advantage of being semi-retired. I decided early on that I didn’t want a security service and its monthly bill. That cut the field in half. Next was simplicity of set up and operation. I didn’t want a bunch of wires, but I also didn’t want to replace or recharge batteries in a wireless system. That can get expensive fast.The Piper NV (night vision- or new version) was my pick. The defining criteria of the Piper NV it that it has to be plugged into an electrical outlet AND it needs a WIFI system to operate. It records about a 35 second duration scene using its fisheye lens of whatever room you place it in. INDOOR USE ONLY! It will continue recording clips like that every time it gets a signal to do so. YOU get to tell it what to do during set-up. Those clips are kept in the cloud at no cost to you! MANY of these home security systems will record to the cloud, but then they charge you for doing so. Piper will let you store around 100 thirty-five second clips for free. Then, as more clips are added, your cloud storage will delete your oldest clips to make room for new ones. I have very little experience with this cloud storage system and base my knowledge of it on what I’ve learned elsewhere. I’ve only recorded one clip so far, during testing.Set-up of the base camera is not hard, but Piper needs to do MUCH more than just give you the first 3 steps for doing set-up. Basically, they put a lot of time into the Piper’s shipping box design and the nice, over-simplistic brochure that comes with it. Instead Piper needs to simplify the box design (it’s somewhat hard to recycle with the foam jammed in the box top) and expand on the information in the little brochure a lot!Piper has a 3.5 megapixel camera. The image is good but not great. It’s hard to discern facial features in day or night modes. Just one or two more megapixels might remedy that shortcoming. The lens does NOT pan and tilt as some might say. You CAN, through finger gestures (like finger pinching/spreading, etc.), manipulate the fisheye image to show a “close up” of the room, etc. You can even divide the room into quadrants, with a close up in each quadrant.Piper has a microphone and a speaker. The microphone is, in my opinion, the weakest aspect of the Piper system. I spent WAY too much time trying to get my Piper’s audio system to function well. It would spit out a couple syllables that I had said in another room, followed by a few seconds of silence, then a couple more syllables of my words. It definitely was not usable for conversation. So I contacted Piper support. Let me say clearly now that Piper support was great at getting back to me right away with possible solutions to my problem. That being said, I have to add that the information offered by their support was seriously lacking. I was told to do a partial restore of my Piper. I did it. No luck. Then I was told how to do a complete factory reset of my Piper. Ok, I did that, but still no difference in my audio. THAT factory reset meant more than the 15 minutes it took to perform. It meant I had to now take down EVERY sensor I had carefully paired with my Piper and placed on doors, walls, etc. and pair AGAIN with the Piper, then scrape off the old sticky foam on each sensor and replace it with new, then carefully place them again on doors, etc. so they would function. On the third try, Piper customer support asked me to make a simple adjustment in my Piper’s Settings that fixed my audio problems. Now I could speak and hear fairly well using the Piper, but image quality was worse in order to accomplish it. I had to ask myself, “How important is it that I use my Piper to have a conversation? “ Not very important at all.I don’t fault the technology in Piper’s audio feature, but I DO fault their customer service for making me do a factory reset in conjunction with removing all my sensors, pairing them again, then reinstalling them with new foam. When I first described my Piper’s audio problem I should have been led to the simple slider adjustment that eventually fixed it. This poor training cost Piper one star in my evaluation.When you buy a sensor for your Piper and have to pair it with the camera, get ready for repeating the procedure a few times. And , If you have to pair a sensor AGAIN with your Piper, get ready for more trouble. It all depends what company you bought your sensors from. If you get Ecolink sensors, they’re easy to pair the first time. But to pair them a SECOND time, start the Piper application to add a sensor, THEN REMOVE THE BATTERY FROM THE ECOLINK SENSOR, wait five+ seconds, replace it back in the sensor, and wait, holding it inches from the front of the Piper. Get ready to repeat this a few times. Honestly, the Piper sensors that came WITH my Piper NV were harder to pair than sensors from Ecolink, when FIRST pairing them on set-up. Later, when I had to pair all 7 sensors again (thanks to Piper’s customer service forgetting that a simple adjustment in Settings would fix my audio!), the Piper sensors were a lot easier because they have a button to push during the pairing instead of a battery to be removed at just the right time. The Ecolink motion sensor and door/window sensor works fine with the Piper NV. I got a GE (Z-Wave) Florescent and Appliance Module (45603)that also works well as an On/Off switch, but apparently does not work as a “repeater” to extend my Piper’s signal which is not reaching my outbuilding as well as I’d like, about 50% effective coverage out there.I really like having all these choices if a sensor has been activated: A) Record a Video Clip, B) Notify Me by (chose whatever I want from: 1. Push Notification, 2.Email, 3. Phone Call, 4. Text message – or choose all!) C. Notify Trusted Circle (my Piper can call my wife, my son, whoever I select), D. Sound Siren (it’s 105 dB, about the same as my old security siren,) E. Turn Wall Switch On – which is just hooked up to a lamp, in my case. This last choice is available IF you add a switch like mine, the GE mentioned above. When we got home from eating out last night that lamp plugged into the Z-wave outlet of the GE switch was turned on and had triggered because my dog barked, setting off the “loud noise” function Piper has. It’s really a nice unit.Piper NV is versatile. It can be UNarmed, yet notify me if a door is opened, a loud noise happens, the temperature drops or rises too far, etc. (I get to set the temperature limits either way.) I can ARM my Piper for Home Stay Mode, and only have certain functions work, good for what the function’s title says staying home, but protected somewhat. Or I can set my Piper for Armed Away Mode- with the siren engaged and ready, etc. etc. Lots of user choices with the Piper NV. I like choices.I have to mention that Piper support will ask you if the Piper light is green when functioning. It looks a bit blue to my wife and me, among other colors it CAN be. Be aware of this; it’s possibly something Piper needs to look at and rectify in the future.So, listen up, Piper: write a good owner’s manual, cut the wasted materials in the over-built box design, increase the megapixels a little, and train your customer support personnel better. Otherwise, you have a fine product! Thanks!

I have been using the unit for about a week. The initial set up went fairly smooth. I purchased the package with dual door sensors and with the exception of the batteries not working on on of the sensors evrything came up on the network ok. I would say show a bit of patience when doing the initial set up. Also, the user manual shipped with the unit is not all that help for really understanding the set up options. At the Piper website, if you go to the support page you will find a 58 page manual. I was not aware of the manual as teh documentation does not tell you it exists, but technical support directed me there. Here is a major issue I found with the unit, and tech support said they had not seen it before. For the first time, I set the unit to "stay armed" I went up to the bedroom to look at the video and and the video was just a white page like the night vision was not working too bright or soemthing. I Played with the contrast control but nothing happened. when I woke up this morning. my iphone 6 + could not find the piper unit. no camera, no dashboard, no way to turn off the arming. So of course I came downstairs and the alarm started blasting with no way to turn it off. I had to unpug the unit and take out the batteries to get it to stop. The unit had to be deleted and completely reinstalled. I worked with technical support to do this and it is now up and running. Piper needs to give an alert that the unit cannot be set up to look out a window. I have it set up at night to look out to my fron porch area, but technical support stated that the window gives it a false day/night reading and unit cant be used to look out a window. If I had known this prior it would have saved me a lot of time, as that is how I need to using the unit so unfortunately I will have to return the system.

I want to love the Piper NV, but false alarms are keeping me from giving this product 4 or 5 stars. The main issue I am having is that the door/window sensors just started randomly flipping from "closed" to "open", even though the door or window is not open. This has happened with both sensors that I received with the kit and the most recent false triggering led to a siren going off at 2:30am for no reason, which almost gave me a heart attack (probably being a little dramatic there, but it was NOT a nice way to wake up in the middle of the night).This most recent false triggering event for the door sensors has turned me off of using the siren feature, which is one of the resaons I chose this device over the competitors.I am going to change the batteries to see if that makes a difference, but I have only had the device for a week, so I wouldn't expect the batteries to be dead already unless the ones in the package were nearly dead on arrival.Very disappointed in my purchase at the moment and crossing my fingers that the false triggers I have been seeing are a fluke of some sort.Update: Rarely connects when I am out of the country. I continue to be very disappointed with my purchase.

We really like everything this Home Security Camera offers, but it would be nice if we could mount a keypad somewheres in our house like our bedroom so we could quickly disarm and arm the unit before and after we leave our room. If the keypad had indicator lights, like Red for armed and Green for disarmed, this unit would be almost perfect for our use. My other complaint, is the app doesn't always work properly and is incredibly fustrating! When it does work correctly, we love being able to look in on the kids and speak to them when they get home from school. The positives far out way the negatives for the Piper.