Owl Car Cam Saga: Part 2

Give a Hoot, ...

Last week I bought an Owl Car Cam and installed it on the dash of my vehicle.  I used it all week for work.  It's definitely not as wonderful as I had thought, but here are my experiences with it.

Keep your Phone Handy

If you've been a reader of this blog you might already know that I'm a fan of Android, although I do own a least one Apple device; an iPhone SE.  The Owl Car Cam requires iOS for now, so I had to begin to use the iPhone a bit more.  In fact, I had to carry it with me everywhere I went.

The Owl Car Cam uses the iPhone's Bluetooth connection to identify the driver when entering the vehicle. If I did not bring the iPhone with me, on which the app is installed, the Owl Car Cam would perceive me as an intruder and take clips of me when I accessed the vehicle. It would shine the interior lights on me and record my every move.  Your Owl "should" recognize you, when you come near it, otherwise it could antagonistic toward you.

Birds don't use Smartphones

Whether it be the App or the user, I had a great deal of difficulty getting to the features that I wanted in the Owl Car Cam app. While I did not talk about this in any detail in Part 1, I have had many opportunities to feel frustrated in using the app this week.

There are three sections of the app, not including the settings.  The sections are labeled; Clips, Cameras, and "From Owl".  Most of these features are merely access to videos, either belonging to you as taken by the Owl Car Cam or from the manufacturer's website / YouTube. 

Whenever you use the phrase "OK Presto", the camera archives a set amount of video, including the prior 10-20 seconds.  These clips are available via the LTE connection to the Camera.  I discovered that some aspects of the video files in the camera are ONLY available through LTE, not through the WiFi connection that is also available in the Camera. However, since I am not typically an iPhone user, I do not keep a SIM card in the iPhone, thereby eliminating my access via my iPhone to certain aspects of the camera.  I also learned today, that Owl  does not support iPads, with or without a SIM card.

Whether deliberately or by accident, the assumption made by the Owl Car Cam team and the iPhone / App team, decided that all devices accessing the camera would have a SIM card and did not really plan for any other situation.  Although, fortunately a little birdie told me, that the Android version of the App will be coming out in the next few weeks.

Owl Droppings

The section of the app called "Camera" allows direct access to the camera either to view the front / rear lens live or to see the last 24 plus hours of activity.  Using these features through the LTE connection uses up your credits for the month.  Currently the price of an Owl Car Cam comes with a $50 sub for a year of LTE from AT&T, that includes 60 credits per month. 

If you're interested in this device for your vehicle and its security, you may want to know that 1 minute of activity is equal to 1 credit.  Each time you connect to the Owl Car Cam remotely and pull out a couple of clips or watch some videos live, you are eating into your credits.  In my, barely one weeks-worth of testing the Camera, I've nearly run out of credits.

I've connected to the camera "live", successfully, possibly 5 times and 15 times have been for clip retrieval. I have only 12 of 60 credits remaining.  These connections appear to be rather costly against my total credits and there is, as previously mentioned, no way to access certain features via WiFi.

What's an Owl Lover to do?

It's probably the best advice in most situations, to be patient.  This product is new as of 2018, it's just getting started with features and functionality.  If anything more Owl Lovers are needed to help work out all the problems.

I have had the opportunity to speak with support at Owl and they seemed to be quite optimistic about their product and it's progress.  This makes me feel more at ease when using my Owl and it's App.

Here's to Part 3 of this Owl Car Cam Saga