Should I buy Sighthound Video?

[automate]

Hello all,

I am currently evaluating Sighthound against the usual -- Zoneminder, Blueiris, NVR (Amcrest etc.). It really worries me that the last update to the app was February 09, 2016. Since $250 isn't cheap, especially when compared to other NVR (DIY and dedicated) options, I wanted to know what others thought in the community?

Thanks!

[ahallada]

I've used a few other software programs including Blue Iris and Security Spy. They are both nice full featured programs, but none of them compare when it comes to search functions and intelligent identification of objects/people. This program is really designed well. What made it better was purchasing a 16TB hard drive for storage of video for around $540 on Amazon (MyBook). I'm set now. I can record weeks of video using 8 cameras streaming between 1-3 MP quality. It's not a perfect software , but it's really good. I'd like to see full screen monitoring of all cams on one screen with resizing capabilities, faster access to video using mobile app, ability to digitally zoom on desktop software and apps now that we have amazing quality cams, and audio recording capabilities.

[automate]

Thanks! I do agree it is amazing at those search functionality and I am impressed. Just worried about the lack of updates.

[303]

I suggest you do not. The app has grown stale and the developers are focusing on the enterprise/commercial technology. The problems I had two years ago are still happening everyday in the app. While the image detection and computer vision processing in Sighthound is superior to SecuritySpy and Sighthound has the better workflow, SecuritySpy is lightning fast with low CPU and RAM overhead. I feel bad posting this because I know the SH folks are well-intentioned, but the app is near useless for me. I get an alert on my phone, click to see what is going on, and look at a black screen with a loading spinner for 30 seconds before giving up and just going to the web interface. The thing about security software is it needs to be responsive and actionable, and Sighthound is not that. It's great for reviewing what happened hours later, but not at the time of notification.

Add to that charging me a yearly subscription cost for "support" that amounts to telling me something should be working that isn't working. So I'm open to saying it's me, but i don't think it is, i think it's that sighthound consumer is not where their focus is and they should probably sunset it.

[millenios]

I would tend to Echo the above, seems to be little development going on, I tend to check the video on a local machine. The remote mobile App is useless. Quality wise the crude standard Interface direct on my Hikvsion 4Mp domes works pretty well.

[visionik]

Hi - Jonathan Taylor here, founder and Chairman of Sighthound.

I wanted to let you know that we are hard at work on Sighthound Video 4.0 and plan to release it before the end of the year. We have a dedicated team of engineers who focus on Sighthound Video. This next release is a big one.

The new version has some *major* improvements in performance - and several of the most requested new features we've received from our customers

It sounds like your biggest disappointment is with streaming video in the mobile app. We are also looking at how we can improve the performance of streaming video in our mobile applications. We have a long term solution that will be available next year, but their are a few tricks we may be able to use to make streaming start faster in Sighthound Video 4.0

Are there other things you'd like improved in the mobile apps?

Thank you for your comments and honesty; and I hope we can win back your enthusiasm.

Best,

-Jonathan

[jonnyking]

Thanks for replying Jonathan.

One feature for the remote access (non mobile) that would be great is the ability to right click the stream or have a button to open the camera's default homepage like we can on the desktop program. I even tried renaming the rule to be my devices homepage address so my users could click that but you do not allow symbols as the name.

Lots of ways around this just nothing I can currently use.

Thank you

[Quach128]

Hi,

I have to agree with some of the posts I would not be recommending to buy unless you have over 6 cameras, so it would work out to be $46 per camera.

I bought the $250 full version and the product hasn't had a single update in months, you do have to pay annuity fee to be entitled to major software releases but if there's none then there's no point.

The simplicity of SH is great, but the lack of remote access features really brings it down. The mobile app is very "simple" it's almost so simple that reviewing videos on it is pointless as you can't filter out or sort by time, so you end up scrolling through hundreds of 30s clips and give up or it crashes.

What SH needs is a remote access client with same if not better UI as the server software, the web server ui is just as useless as the mobile app. I end up Using RDP to open up SH on the desktop app if I need to really need to search/interrogate something.

IFTTT integration was nice but found it pointless because you can't use other triggers to perform certain tasks. oexample. If I leave my home location- arm all cameras. Simple but not possible.

Also I really wish that SH could do fisheye lense correction and number plate detection.

IFTTT + number plate detection would make this worth $250 just for that.

Example: if certain number plate detected then open garage door. WoW!!

[303]

Hi Jonathan, thanks for your reply.

I really hope the upgrade cost will be trivial or you'll provide us with some promo codes. I bought 3.0 and paid your yearly subscription cost for 3 (?) years and support has been limited to a few nice beta releases, but you haven't actually fixed any of the bugs in your service, which is very frustrating and unfair to your customers.

You need to take a step back from the product solution about streaming. The bigger problems can be stated in JTBD formats

When I receive a notification of an alert on my phone I want to instantly see what's going on so that I can act on it

When I'm mobile and get a notification, I want to see the important content of the notification to know if my home is being broken into

When I get a notification, I want to know that it's an actual event and not a camera or software glitch, so that I do not begin to distrust the notifications

When I get an email notification, I want to see motion (e.g., animated gif), not static frames, so that I do not simply have to just launch a web browser because the email didn't give me useful information.

And so on. So while yes you can say "streaming" it is more about the immediacy and availability of information, and our ability to act on that information. Right now I have sighthound running to do vision analysis on some stuff on the back garden, but I've gone back to SecuritySpy + IR motion triggers, which save a movie to a folder, and those movies then get texted to me via MMS (working on a Slack version now though) as animated gifs. This is about 10s latency in total, versus Sighthound's...usually failure to even deliver the movie when i click the notification.

But if we then zoom one level up from even that, I'd like to know that what you can improve is your development turnaround time and that we are getting what we pay for, because I feel pretty shafted by caving in to your support fee only to have the same problems persist at an engineering level.

BTW Devin and Ryan are awesome and I'm thankful they've been engaged with the community here. This is more about how sighthound operates as a company and if we're all just signing up for another 3 years of stale product when we buy 4.0.

[automate]

Thank you guys and Thank you, Jonathan, for chiming in.

I have chosen to wait to see Sighthound 4 before buying this myself and recommending it to colleagues who have been meaning to move away from proprietary NVRs.

Absolutely +1 on the ability to instantly see the movie instead of waiting ~30-40 seconds for it to load on mobile app. My $60 Amcrest cam sends me a pic + movie over email! SH gotta be able to do something.

As a bonus: +1 on two-way IFTTT control. I would too love *send* triggers to SH instead of just receiving them. Would be great to do things like arm cameras when a particular trigger happens. For now, I hacked this functionality together using a script I wrote but come on, at this price point I expect SH to be doing it out of the box.

I have told 10s if not 100s of people about Sighthound and how you beat even MSFT Research on Bao face rec. It is clear that you guys have a team of brilliant people. The price point for this product is such that it warrants a much agile update schedule and far superior features set.