Trywin WD3 mini camera product reviews

You never know when a small, remotely-viewable camera could come in handy. For me, it was when I discovered my car had some engine trouble I couldn't spot easily. I could hear it, but the location was just too dangerous for me to risk shoving my head near it, or my hand in there with a torch and camera. So, I turned to this unit...

Small - at only 47mm square and just 17mm thick - it also had a range of mounting brackets, including, to my delight, a magnetic one! With this bracket attached, the thickness was only a little over 2cm - still thin enough to get into place to see the cause of the noise without risking it touching any moving parts in the engine. So, while the engine was off, I carefully slide this into place and magnetically attached it to the side wall of the engine bay, added a tiny self-contained LED light made from some duct tape, an LED, a hearing-aid battery and small magnet, then connected to the camera with my tablet via WiFi. The image was a little grainy due to the LED being further away from the probable noise-source than ideal, but it was good enough to see some loose connectors and a missing bolt once I started the engine and things started to dance around where they shouldn't.

While this alone warrants a good score, in my books, there are a lot of other uses for this small camera. I was able to successfully mount it to an RC car and drive it around this floor of the building without leaving my office chair, and also mount it to an inexpensive toy quadcopter and make it into a budget FPV drone. I was also able to discretely mount it in the hallway beside my office so I could keep an eye on my youngest, who was under my sole care that day. For that alone, I would have paid this price, as it proved to be invaluable when it came to explaining the strange noises I was hearing, which turned out to be him driving his toy racecar along the wall! I was able to put a stop to that before any damage was done.

Recharge time on this baby is tolerable, and you'll get a couple of hours out of a full charge if you don't over-extend the WiFi. Turn the WiFi off of course, and you'll nearly triple that - I ran out of storage on a 4gb memory card before I ran out of battery.

The software has quite a few good features, but the user interface needs some attention if you want to delve below the immediate features and use it to its fullest. However, the biggest mystery for me - and unfortunately one I couldn't address as I only had one camera to test - was how you got FOUR camera connecting and showing up at once. The reason for my puzzlement is due to the method of connection. Unlike IP/Network cameras, your viewer doesn't act as a central 'server' hub, calling the feeds in as 'clients'. You need to disconnect from your WiFi access point and connect directly to the camera, making the camera the 'server' and your tablet/phone the 'client' - so... how do you connect to four WiFi access points at the same time?! I fear this will remain a mystery unless or until I can get my hands on a second unit.

Overall, while this is far from being the cutting edge in WiFi cameras, it's also priced far from those lofty heights too. While I can't honestly say I see it as a great deal, it does seem to be of quality manufacture, it certainly does all it claims to, it has some distinct advantages in terms of size, and of course some limitations too. I would class this as a 'fairly good deal' and would recommend it to people who want something compact, not overly feature-rich, and at a good price.