Best Home Camera For Pets

I’m proud to say I was an early adopter of pet home cameras. I got the first generation of Petcube shortly after they launched on Kickstarter in 2013 and started selling in stores.

I purchased the camera because I was going on a weekend trip and I felt so anxious about leaving Charlie and Nala alone for 2 nights. I bought it to alleviate my own separation anxiety from them.

After being a loyal customer for several years, I HIGHLY recommend the Petcube Play as a no frills home camera for your cat to put your mind at ease when you’re away from home. 

What I especially love about the Petcube Play camera is that first, it shows a high quality wide-angle live feed on your phone even with night vision. Second, if you’re stuck pulling long nights at work, you can turn on the community sharing setting so fellow Petcubers can play with your cats using the laser so that your cat doesn’t get bored throughout the day. Third, their customer service is exceptional.

Compared to other home cameras for pets, the Petcube Play is the smallest and the most sleek. My 1st gen is silver and I have the  new Petcube Play in rose gold. 

Petcube also has the treat dispenser but for the affordable price aspect, I like the Petcube Play for the simplicity of doing its job.

Easy Set-Up

The cube-shaped camera comes with 2 parts – the camera and the cord. Inside the box you’ll also find a short and simple user manual and a Petcube logo stickers (like Apple when you buy an iPhone).

To set up, you plug the cord into the wall and the back of the camera. For physical set up, you’re done.

Following the manual, you first download the Petcube app. Second, open the app and press down the power button on the back of the camera for 3 seconds until the front blinks green. Third, you go to your WiFi settings on your phone and choose the Petcube network listed in the available Wifi networks. Done.

Now you can let your camera update the latest software setting and you can customize the settings and your profile on your app.

Quality

I have 2 Petcube cameras – the 1st gen and the latest Petcube Play.

Both have HD quality and 138 degree wide angle so you can take in the room from wall to wall. The quality of the live feed you see on your phone from the camera is great quality. As long as you have a good WiFi network, you can stream live without any buffering.

I called out their name and they looked at me (err, the camera).

You can record a video of you playing laser with your cats during live feed.

My favorite updated feature is the night vision. With the 1st gen, I had to keep the light on while I was away in order for me to check on the cats at night. This is definitely a waste of energy.

And if you forgot to keep the light on, from dusk til dawn, you wouldn’t know if your cat was a vigilante saving the neighborhood, because all you saw was pitch black on your phone.

With the night vision, you can see all the details in black and white and even your cat’s reflective laser beam eyes.

Laser

Speaking of laser, the red laser pointer built into the Petcube Play camera is very useful to keep your cat entertained while you’re gone. Where you point your finger on the phone is pretty well-calibrated to the actual location of the laser.

App: Community Sharing & Multiple Cameras

The updated feature since mid 2017 is the ability to connect multiple Petcube cameras in one app. I have one camera in the living room and the other in the bedroom, so this is a very convenient function.

Another feature of the app is the growing community of fellow loyal Petcubers. You can change your settings so that your camera is open to the community during certain days and times that you set it for. During that window, other Petcubers can play laser with your cat.

I adore this post by a Petcuber in the community!

My profile. Find me to play with Charlie & Nala!

Customer Service

The reason why I’m such a loyal Petcube user is their exceptional customer service. My 1st gen stopped working after a few years, so I contacted customer service. I told them that I had gotten it a few years ago and I no longer had the receipt for it.

I went online and a live chat prompted automatically. Ciarra, the customer service rep, paid a lot of attention to me. She suggested a few different protocol and when nothing worked, she offered to replace it for me even though it had been outside the 1-year warranty.

Not only that, she emailed me a few weeks after to follow up with me. And all this was done over chat and email; a dream for an introvert!