Sonoff CAM Slim and the NSPanel Pro

Itead hasn’t paid for this review, but they did send me the products to have a play with. All opinions are my own.

Itead were kind enough to send me a small parcel containing their Sonoff CAM Slim, a new NSPanel Pro and enclosure stand. I eagerly unwrapped them all to see what was what.

At first glance, the camera is relatively small and lightweight. It came with an attached stand, USB-C to USB-A cable, and a fixing kit (screws/plugs and some 3m).The camera has a good degree of swivel and can be mounted in pretty much any orientation. It’s much lighter than I thought it would be. In my mind, this is for interior use as opposed to externally like the Reolink cameras I’ve tested and wrote about previously. More on this later.

Next I opened the NSPanel enclosure stand. On the box it looks to be compatible with the NSPanel Pro I received, as well as the NSpanel-EU and the NSPanel-US. It ‘s a solid stand capable of mounting the NSPanel at an angle on the desk. It comes with two supplied screws that you need to use to secure the panel firmly in place. The included cut out at the back allows it a power cable to sit comfortably behind.

Finally, saving the best ’til last, I had a look at the NSPanel Pro. Despite the packaging looking like a courier had been playing football with it, the NSPanel was securely wrapped with a small foam layer protecting the screen. It too, contained a pair of mounting bolts, suitable to fasten the panel to a standard UK square back box (or an EU round one). I’d say in terms of size, it was pretty close to the unit I had previously been given from Violet for testing, but they’re not the same. The units are different in size and weight, so I don’t think they’re “rebrands”.

On the rear of the unit as per the photo you can see the L and N terminals (obscured by a small plastic cover), as well as 4 small mounting tabs on each corner bonding the main guts of the unit with the actual screen. Whilst it looks like there’s room for some additional terminals there, sadly, no relays are present, which I think could be a missed opportunity for connecting some mains lighting, etc. I tried to pull the tabs outwards on each corner to free the frame from the body, but I was unable to get them all to go at once. In the end, I managed to somehow get half of one side off. I used a small flathead screwdriver and gently prised off the frame. At the bottom of the screen there’s a small gap for it. I slowly started to twist until the screen popped off. I am not sure if that’s the correct way to do it, but it worked. This revealed the screw holes in the rear of the unit.

I borrowed a cable from a Sonoff basic, connected it up (remember to thread the cable through the whole in the rear of the stand first!) and tightened the unit to the enclosure. The screw heads are quite coarse, so I needed to use some degree of force to put the unit in the stand. I wouldn’t say it’s sitting as tight as I’d like it, but it’s ok. In went the plug and within a few moments, there was light!

After the splash screen and the welcome chime, I was immediately presented with a screen to enter the WiFi network. I did as I was told and the machine showed connection, bringing me to the main screen interface. From what I’ve read, this device is running on Android 8.X. The only option I had was a button showing me “Disarmed”. Swiping left showed me an empty Device screen, left again showed me an empty Scenes screen. Swiping down brought the Settings screens.

The quality of the panel is good. The picture is sharp and vibrant. The actual touch side of things isn’t as accurate as I would have liked. A lot of the time I needed to select something more than once, particularly when needing to enter a sub-menu. If I wanted to swipe down, often it would swipe me to the side instead. It could just be my hooves for hands, but I manage ok on an iPad!

I clicked on the eWelink account and it showed me a QR code. I knew I was going to have to connect this to eWelink to give it a full run through, so I downloaded the app to my phone. This was where the fun began. For some reason, I was unable to create an account. I repeatedly entered my region (UK) and then my email and a password, but it wouldn’t take. For some reason it refused to create the account. Undeterred, I went to the eWelink website and created the account manually there. Once created and added to Bitwarden, I then managed to successfully log into the eWelink app on my One Plus 9 Pro. Ok, irritating, but on we press.

Once in the app, I clicked the big plus button bottom centre and then selected Scan QR code. I carefully aligned the QR code directly over the screen waiting for the hook up, but alas nothing happened. I must have tried this about 10 times. I restarted the NSPanel Pro a couple of times, thinking that maybe it had upgraded its firmware and something needed to reboot, but this did nothing. Eventually, I thought I’d try a different WiFi network. I put it on my DMZ vlan (no Adguard, firewall rules etc), and attached my phone. As soon as they were both on the same network, I tried the ritual again and we were in business. The screen connected, and an image of the NSPanel Pro appeared in my app. In the settings menu, i could now see my email address listed on the panel. So far so good. FWIW DMZ is both 2.4 and 5Ghz enabled, so it must have been some of my pfSense rules or Adguard blocking something.

I plugged the camera directly into a USB power source and waited for it to switch on. I heard a voice coming from the unit. I couldn’t make out what it was saying, but looked in the app and selected the plus button again to add another device. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me which one to select. The camera can’t show a QR code to scan. I pressed  Sound Pairing and moved forward through the screen until I got to the select WiFi screen. Here despite it saying disable 5Ghz on your WiFi, I went for it anyway. Next I heard a variety of high pitched beeps, reminiscent of an old modem or fax. It went on for 3 minutes and was annoying.

At the end of it, nothing. I then switched to another WiFi network, having to connect my phone to it first and then re-attempting the pairing. At this point it took. The thing is, this network is my IOT network and internet access is blocked. I decided to try again with the original DMZ network. I put the CAM Slim back into pairing mode by using a paperclip in the rear. I went through the 3 minute aural torture again, but this time it took. Suddenly, the cam appeared in the app., and the NSPanel Pro now showed a Camera option on it’s main screen.  A quick press of that, and I was suddenly met with this little 1080p camera picture shining in all its glory.

You have the ability to use the camera as an intercom, or you can mute the audio and mic entirely. I like this. The quality and interaction with the NSPanel Pro is better than I expected. I also took the chance to add a second camera. I opted for my Reolink 810a. This is a much heavier resolution than the CAM Slim, so took a little longer to add, but the RTSP feed was accepted first time.

Note, this was the URL I used…

The reolink worked well, but occasionally there were some drop outs. I’d occasionally see artefacts or a quick full screen freeze. I attribute this to the 810a being a 4k camera and maybe the NSPanel Pro didn’t always have the bandwidth for it. On the whole though it was very useable.

Note I have the ability to amend the address/name of the Reolink camera, but not the CAM Slim. I guess because that was initially added via eWelink, so any amendments need to be done in the app. I actually managed to bring the Sonoff camera directly into Home-Assistant/Frigate without using eWelink as well, but I’ll cover that in a separate post. There’s no RTMP with the camera, just RTSP.

A good feature of the CAM slim is the ability to record locally to an SD card or you can record to the cloud. If you take a look in the eWelink app, it shows you the various features available to you, but for cloud services, you’re paying a subscription. £32 a year per camera. I’m struggling to get on board with that. I understand that servers cost, and need to be maintained, and as we all unfrotunately know, energy isn’t cheap, but say you had 3 or 4 cameras in your house, you’re suddenly looking at a proper subscription. Still, with the RTSP option, you can choose your own solution. At least Sonoff are able to offer the functionality if needed.

I didn’t hook up the CAM to my Alexa or Google. I don’t have a voice assistant with a screen, so I would have been unable to ask Alexa or Google to “show me the CAM” so to speak.

Next it was time to add a sensor. I knew that the NSPanel Pro is a zigbee 3.0 hub, so I wanted to connect a zigbee motion sensor to it. I have an aqara motion sensor sat on my desk for testing. Using a paper clip, I put the sensor mode in pairing, and hit the add device/sensor on the panel. I watched the screen count down for three minutes, but it failed to find the sensor. I must have tried about 5 or 6 times. It was only then that I saw online that it was currently only compatible with Sonoff / Hue / Ikea devices at present. I guess more will come later according to the product page. This wasn’t a total deal breaker for me, as I knew there was an integration for eWelink in Home-Assistant anyway.

I played around with the eWelink app, but didn’t get very far. I was unable to add any scenes initially, although a system update seemed to allow me to add some fairly rudimentary automations, including the ability to buy Sonoff products that I didn’t already own. Not sure I really appreciated that. If I am honest, I think the app isn’t particularly good. It’s not particularly polished, and not so intuitive. I’m sure if you were all in on Sonoff products and everything just showed up in there, then it might be easier to digest, but given I am not all in on Sonoff products, I have a range of vendors and protocols I work with, this was never going to be a hit with me. Speaking of multiple vendors, let’s get on to Home-Assistant.

A quick show of Google-Fu and I soon arrived to this page – https://appcms-src.coolkit.cn/uncategorized/9213.html

I won’t recite all the steps, essentially I added this repository to the add-ons page (https://github.com/CoolKit-Technologies/ha-addon). Then refreshed the page and installed the eWelink Smart Home add on. Despite mentioning online I needed a Long access token, the newer version of the add-on supposedly doesn’t need that now, so it was literally click and start.

Now for the real fun. I clicked on the link on the left, and logged in. I managed to add a couple of  tasmotized smart plugs to them (a Blitzwolf SHP5 and a Teckin SP22). I did the sync option on the add-on page. I wasn’t able to control either plug from the add-on page, despite being shown toggles. I then went to the eWelink app. The devices were there, but in duplicate under two different types of icon (i.e. “landing” and then DeviceXXXX). All very strange. Each entity showed me two channels. Despite the Teckin only having a single relay. Channel 1 switched the Teckin on and off as expected, Channel 2 did nothing. Neither channel could control the Blitzwolf. Both were running Tasmota 12.

I checked the NSPanel to see if the entities had fed through. There was nothing. I rebooted it, but again nothing. So I left it there. Strangely enough, the following day, I went to check the NSPanel for something, and the two entities had actually found it’s way on to the screen. Both were showing as Offline and unresponsive, despite me being able to control one of them with the eWelink app.

To increase my frustrations further, later that day, Home-Assistant notified me of an update for the eWelink add-on. I quickly installed it, thinking it would clean up some of these issues, but instead of fixing it for me, I had a 502 gateway error and could not even access the add-on or the configuration. Error messages were partially in mandarin, but restarting the add-on didn’t fix it. I selected rebuild instead and that brought us back to a useable add-on page again. But from this add-on, I am unable to remove any devices that have been added. You need to go back into the eWelink app to manually remove entities. Removing the dummy device automatically removes the expected device.

The update did appear to fix my ability to control the Teckin plug from the NSPanel, but strange that the Blitzwolf plug doesn’t work at all. Neither are Sonoff, but both are clearly Tuya, and both are running the same version of Tasmota.

Firstly, the CAM Slim. I like it. It’s a small unobtrusive little unit, which works well with the NSPanel Pro. I LOVE the fact there’s an RTSP stream available for you to bring into whatever system you like. Low light performance was ok, for this level of camera. I could see myself using this as something like a baby monitor or to just check on things that aren’t particularly image sensitive, as opposed to the full home security package. Would I have it guarding my Ferrari? No, but I wouldn’t want a Reolink unit sat at the end of a crib looking down like a Dalek either. Considering it’s offering scheduled motion detection and alarms, as well at that RTSP output, it represents good value. It’s currently on the sonoff site for $27.

I really liked the enclosure stand actually. At first I figured it was going to be a bit pointless, but it’s actually solid and well made. I thought you’d just want to put the panel on the wall and be done with it, but given its ability to take in RTSP streams and display a clock, I could imagine having it on a desk or by a bedside. It looks like it will fit the Violet switch too, so that could work well as a portable Sonos controller, or again a baby monitor. For around $10 I’m all over it. If I had one criticism, I wish they’d counter sunk the display actually into the front fascia rather than having it sit proud. Aesthetically it would look better.

And finally, the NSPanel Pro. This was the first Sonoff panel that I’ve had my hands on, but definitely not the first Sonoff device I’ve owned. I’ve been playing with basics, r3 pros, and zigbee sticks for the best part of three or four years, so I’m familiar with the company, the quality and their ecosystem.

Sonoff have always made decent products at a decent price point. Which puts me in a bit of a bind here. The current pre-order price on this is $89.90, which is approximately £85. The usual price on their web site, looks to be $119.90.

That’s a pretty big chunk of change for a product that’s had this many niggles every step of the way.

To remind the issues I had so far:

At the bottom of this page you can see the proposed roadmap. It’s nice to see what they’re working on, but what if things don’t pan out? Also the elephant in the room is the lack of local control. If my internet is out, this becomes an attractive paperweight. I am not even going to go into potential data privacy aspects. I don’t want to be too down on the NSPanel, as if I had more products from the Sonoff ecosystem, it would have done a lot more for me. Had I had their smart sensors, or fans, the panel would be reporting back to me energy usage, alerts and detections. The Sonoff products I own have been flashed with Tasmota and have served me absolutely 100% reliably for YEARS.

I am sure things will improve on the software side, but I can’t help but think this has been sent out prematurely. I reached out to Itead on my various issues and they were quick to ackowledge them and tell me that firmware fixes were already being coded. They said they were in the process of setting up an NSPanel API which would allow other branded sensors to connect. The ETA on that was sometime in November, so things are definitely on the up.

It does have a Zigbee hub built into it, which should be ready for Matter next year. I would hope this would then allow you to interact with everything else that’s Matter enabled. I mean that’s kind of the point right?

The Home-Assistant interaction definitely needs to improve. If that was working correctly and you could bring everything over, I’d feel much happier about waiting for the rest of the features. I’m actually surprised that it wasn’t working well to be frank. Integrating with Home-Assistant via MQTT, API, REST, etc. isn’t anything new.

I know some people have been actively working to reflash the NSPanel Pro with alternative firmwares. I think I’m going to give that a try. The hardware appears capable, I just feel the software in its current form is holding it back.

Cheers!