[AFMUG] Nest Cams

[Ken Hohhof]

Am I right these things have really poor WiFi signal levels?  Anybody know 
if there is a way to improve it, like adding an external antenna or 
something?

Customers hook them up, go away for a week, and then complain their Internet 
was going up and down while they were gone, when it was a WiFi problem not 
an Internet problem.  Now that I switched one such customer over to a 
managed router, I can see the signal from one of the Nest Cams is 
around -79.  It does work reliably now with the Mikrotik 951G which it 
didn't with their Netgear WNDR4500, but -79 still sucks for a signal given 
it's just a ranch house.

People should not be using these as a security camera - maybe a nannycam or 
petcam.  All a thief would need is a primitive WiFi jammer and the cameras 
are offline, there is no local storage.  Plus each camera uses 200 kbps 
upstream, and there is a monthly fee per camera for the cloud storage.  At 
least it worked without UPnP.  And at least Nest warns you not to use them 
with a mobile hotspot because you will exceed your data usage cap.