Seems like every home security camera has a paid cloud service these days. So it’s no surprise that Petcube has decided to announce a cloud service of their own. The service is designed to work with their Petcube Interactive Wi-Fi Pet Camera. The Petcube Care service is their answer for owners that wish to access their video from hours, days or weeks ago. Let’s look at the service and figure out if it’s worth subscribing to.
In our Petcube Product Review, we noted the absence of a cloud storage feature. We also noted the absence of any on-board storage such as an SD card. This more or less eliminated the Petcube from consideration as a home security solution. The introduction of Petcube Care is a very important step forward to consider this camera for home security purposes.
Cost of a Petcube Care Subscription
The cost of Petcube Care is on the high side for a home security camera, especially the higher storage plan. That’s compared to leaders in the home security space such as Nest and Samsung. There are two levels.
The starter plan is $10 monthly and that gets ten days of event storage. An event is when an alarm such as motion is detected. These are stored for 10 days then deleted from the cloud. You can save $20 with an annual commitment.
The highest level gets you 30 days of online storage for $30 monthly. You can save $60 with an annual commitment.
Features of Petcube Care
Petcube allows you to record events that are triggered by motion and sound. The video that correlates to these events is saved on Petcube’s servers which are located in the cloud.
I’m ot a big fan of sound generated alerts on any home security camera including Petcube. Ambient noise in the background will cause false alerts. Just use the motion alerts.
You can get alerts when the event occurs. Petcube allows three modes to be set. They are called awake, quiet and sleep. Based upon the times that you correlate with these modes, alerts can be muted or turned on.
Keep bandwidth in mind when activating any cloud service including Petcube Care. This suggestion is especially important for ISPs that limit your monthly bandwidth consumption.
How to Activate Petcube Care
You will need to get into the Petcube Remote Care Setup Page to set it up.
Logon to your account. The account should already be setup since it is needed to use the camera in the first place. Petcube is offering a 30-day trial to start and I strongly encourage taking advantage of the free trial to make sure this service is something you want to pay for.
Should I Subscribe to the Petcube Care Service?
Petcube Care is a very important first step in marketing these cameras for something other than watching your pet when not home. The absence of any cloud or on-board storage was a detractor in considering this camera for anything but a way to watch and entertain your pet.
Hopefully Petcube has plans to integrate advanced features into the Petcube firmware such as motion zones which allow exclusion of areas that you do not want to get alerted for. Most major players in home security cameras include this important feature as a way to reduce false alarms.
I’m not generally a fan of having to pay for a subscription service on a camera that you already paid for. In the case of Petcube Care, my opinion remains the same. I personally would not pay for it.
This service is for those that are in love with their Petcube and need the ability to go back in time to see what caused the motion in their home or simply want to archive their pet’s greatest moments. Without Petcube Care, there is no way to do that.