Google’s Nest shares great tips on saving bandwidth from your cameras

How’s self-isolation treating your internet connection? If you’ve been noticing some lag, then Google’s Nest hardware division has started sharing tips on how to save bandwidth by limiting your cameras.

If you didn’t know already, your Nest cameras are technically always streaming. The unused video data is dumped after 5, 10 or 30 days, depending on your streaming plan. But that’s a lot of data being uploaded, that maybe you don’t actually need – especially if you’re trying to work from home, or school a child online. Google’s Nest hardware division is sending out tips to users on how to save some of that bandwidth at least with their cameras.

There’s three tips that Google has offered for their Nest cameras:

1. Create a Nest Cam schedule. Turn cameras off in the Nest app or set a schedule so that they’re off while you need Internet access. Learn more

2. Use Home/Away Assist. You can use Home/Away Assist so that your Nest Cams automatically turn off while you’re home. Learn more

3. Adjust camera video quality. If you want to keep them on while you’re home, reduce the streaming quality to use less bandwidth. Learn more

The Home/Away Assist option which uses your phone’s location and sensor data to tell when you’re home is definitely something you want to turn on – unless you like capturing those impromptu moments that we call life, and even then you still can but just in lower quality if you chose option 3.

In our household we’ve got two adults trying to work from home, a child that needs entertainment, and then we’ve got all those neat IoT devices that make our lives easier. Scaling back some of those things is a great idea at the moment, so maybe you should try these out and see how you go.