- Sep 28, 2018
- 225
- Pool Size
- 13000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I had a heck of a time finding an alarm people were really happy with here so I figured I'd share our overall very positive experience with SwamCam. Some key takeaways:
Anyway, just wanted to post our experience for anyone searching in the future. With the ubiquitous nature of Ring, this feels like something that should have existed many years ago but it's relatively new. I haven't been thrilled with some of the bugs and quirks to get it to the point of reliability, but support was excellent to get me to that point - and I don't really see any viable competitors that can do all of this, so I do think this is absolutely worthwhile for anyone with young kids. Gives us a lot of peace of mind that it will always go off when we need it to.
- Phenomenal American-based support team that spent a whole lot of time on the phone and via email assisting with install and troubleshooting major to even minor issues. Can't emphasize this one enough.
- Very few false alarms once configured with a customized detection zone that avoids elements that seem to commonly trigger it. They say most pools don't need a customized zone, but ours has too many random things that set it off - so we have yet another subscription, but it is what it is.
- If the custom zone is not carefully set to avoid them, it is also set off by our areca palms, the waterfall, balls left in the pool - even hanging lights against the screen that reflect into the pool at dusk/dawn! We have our zone dialed in to only capture the deck immediately around the pool for these reasons. So its "Human Detection AI" is going to be underwhelming if you're expecting Ring or Nest type performance. Claims like "Featuring advanced child-detection software that alerts you wirelessly as your child is approaching the pool" tended to give me the impression this product was so dialed in that only a small human would trip it. That said, it's better than other pool alternatives I've seen, and I'm sure they have more liability than Ring missing someone walking in the corner, so Swamcam is probably programmed to be overly cautious. There is a sensitivity adjustment that helps, but the only way to almost fully eliminate our problems was a customized detection zone.
- Along with phone alarms, it has an indoor alarm module that screams louder than my upset toddler (and that's saying something). We really like that a lot because it absolutely gets our attention anywhere in the house or outside since the camera goes off too. The voice component of it that says "Swamcam armed/disarmed" is also very (too) loud, but the alarm/voice speakers are separated so a piece of scotch tape over the voice speaker made that an easy fix (thanks to support for the suggestion as it ships without an volume adjustment for certification purposes).
- Comes with a PIN arm/disarm keypad that could be very useful for guests. The keypad can be programmed to auto arm the system after a set time of being disarmed. In other words, if you set it to auto arm after 30 minutes, if you're in the pool for longer than that - it will sound the alarm. It would make more sense to say "auto arm after xx minutes of inactivity." Not sure if there's a liability or technical reason that can't be done, or if it just hasn't been completed yet - but as soon as that is in place, we will ditch my hacked together solution below:
Anyway, just wanted to post our experience for anyone searching in the future. With the ubiquitous nature of Ring, this feels like something that should have existed many years ago but it's relatively new. I haven't been thrilled with some of the bugs and quirks to get it to the point of reliability, but support was excellent to get me to that point - and I don't really see any viable competitors that can do all of this, so I do think this is absolutely worthwhile for anyone with young kids. Gives us a lot of peace of mind that it will always go off when we need it to.
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