Motorola FOCUS 66 Wi-Fi HD Home Monitoring Camera Review

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I’ve been looking at WiFi cameras on and off for years.  Just within the last few, there have been cameras that have the home monitoring aspect which includes alerting you when something is being picked up on the camera. That’s where the Motorola FOCUS 66 WiFi HD Home Monitoring camera comes in.

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Set up of the Motorola FOCUS camera is actually very similar to setting up devices like the Google Chromecast.  To set up, you’ll install the Hubble for Motorola Monitor app from the Google Play store or the iTunes App Store.  Once installed, you sign up for an account on the service; the app then looks for the camera’s WiFi network and allows you to latch on.

Once the set up is complete, the camera goes into monitoring mode.  With the motion detected video turned on, it will alert you whenever there’s movement in the monitored area; it also will notify you if it detects sound in the area. I turned this feature off, as the mic is very sensitive, and it picks up noise from all over the house.  For instance, if I drop a dish upstairs it would detect that.  Fortunately loud sound isn’t a trigger for the video recording feature — only movement. The last feature  is that the camera has a thermometer built in, so it will show you the temp in the monitored area as well as sending a notification when it falls outside the low and high temps.

You can look at the Motorola FOCUS camera using any browser on the Hubble Connected website, and you can do everything you can do from the app via your web browser.

Once you have gone through the trial, you can continue to use the camera to check in on the room where it’s placed and manually record video for free via the app.  You will have to have a plan in order for it to record motion detected video; plans run $2.99 per month or $29 yearly for 24 hours of motion detected video, $9.99 per month or $99 yearly for 7 days of motion detected video, or $29.99 or $299 yearly for 30 days of motion detected video.

The Motorola FOCUS 66 WiFi HD Home Monitoring camera has a lot going for it.  It is 720p HD video, and it can also see in the dark.  The video that comes out of it though looks a bit pixelated to me — it’s not something you’d want to use for video you actually care about, but for home security it’s just fine.  The one major thing, for me anyway, that I do not like about this camera is it is forever connected to the Hubble service.  You can’t access a webpage locally on the device on your home network; it can only be done via the app or Hubble website.  This brings to concern the security of your video recordings as well as what happens to the camera if the service goes away.  I’d be more happy if it supported more than one cloud service for the video recordings, but it doesn’t.  When Hubble goes away, if it ever does, then you’ll have a $130 paperweight ($60 on Amazon [affiliate link]).  That’s not what I am looking for in a product I wouldn’t regularly be upgrading — like this camera.

I’d look elsewhere for similarly priced cameras that can use more than one service as well as being able to use just locally on your own home network.

Source: Manufacturer supplied review unit of the Motorola FOCUS 66 WiFi HD Home Monitoring camera

What I Like: Easy setup; set it, and forget it.

What Needs Improvement: Forever connected to Hubble service; it won’t work without it.

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About the Author

Joel McLaughlin
Joel is a consultant in the IT field and is located in Columbus, OH. While he loves Linux and tends to use it more than anything else, he will stoop to running closed source if it is the best tool for the job. His techno passions are Linux, Android, netbooks, GPS, podcasting and Amateur Radio.