As pet parents, we all hate having to leave our fur kids home when we go to work or other places where pets aren’t allowed. If you’ve ever worried or wondered what they are up to when you’re away, “there’s an app for that!” Actually it’s a WiFi enabled video camera from Samsung and it lets you remotely monitor your pet using free apps for Smartphone, Tablet, PC or Mac.

Since receiving the Samsung PetCam WiFi Video Pet Monitor for review, we’ve tested it out in several situations and I’m super impressed with how well it works. I’ll tell you right up front that I think this fun & useful little system makes a great gift for yourself or any pet parent on your list. While it retails for $199, you’ll find it on sale this time of year and can snag one for as low as $79 here. Amazon prices change frequently so be sure to hurry if you want a deal!

The Samsung Wi-Fi PetCam offers real-time video and audio monitoring, making it the perfect solution for anyone who is away from their home, but still wants to keep an eye on their pets. It allows for easy set up and placement anywhere in the house, video feeds are accessible through a website or smartphone app on iOS or Android and owners can even set it up to receive notifications from sound/motion that is detected in the area. With a one touch pairing button, monitoring a pet is super easy and FUN!

I found it really easy to add the camera to our home WiFi network and got it installed, set up and working in about 15 minutes. I found it a little confusing at first to get the settings right so that it would upload video clips that I could watch later, but figured out I had to first link my YouTube profile to my Google+ profile and set my Uploads to Private. Currently, the PetCam can only record and watch 30 second video clips of “events” via YouTube. I would prefer to be able to have them sent to my smartphone or private cloud storage like DropBox or iCloud but once you get the privacy settings sorted, you can log in to YouTube and see the little lock icon next to each new video and rest assured that no one else is viewing what goes on at your place unless you choose to share it with them! It can also save snapshots to your Picasa account if you want, too.

The video is great on both WiFi and wireless and I’ve used both my Samsung Galaxy S3 Android phone and my iPad to watch Daisy remotely when I’m away. Since I work from home, she’s really gotten used to having me around almost all the time, so she does have a bit of separation anxiety when left alone. I’ve always worried about this but am happy to have seen, thanks to the PetCam, that after giving several really big hound dog howls and pacing for a few minutes, she does calmly settle herself up on the arm of hubby’s chair and take a nap.

The camera doesn’t have the option to record continuously or for longer than 30 second bits, so you get little snippets of what happens, but they’re time-stamped so you can watch them in order. I spliced together two of the 30 second recordings so you could check it out:

As you can see, the camera doesn’t move, so your pet may sometimes walk out of view. If you have a big place or want several angles, the system is expandable up to 10 cameras which is great if you have multiple pets or let your fur kids have full run of the place. Our apartment isn’t that big so we just leave her in the living room and shut the other doors when we go out.

In addition to really good quality video during daylight hours, the camera also has Night Vision capabilities up to 20 feet so that you can keep an eye on your pets even in the dark. And another cool feature is that it has Two-Way Talk so that you can hear what’s going on and talk back to them. Super handy if your pet is naughty or gets lonely and you just want to say Hi. This function only works over WiFi and not when you are on 3G or 4G wireless connections.

All in all, I’m happy to recommend the Samsung PetCam and think it’s a really fun and useful tech gadget for pet parents and anyone else who wants to monitor their home or business while they are away.  Visit Amazon here for deals on one.