Hotel Travel Camera Solution – Solved!

The Problem

Have you ever wanted to bring your own travel camera video surveillance camera to the hotel, VRBO, or an AirBnB? You get it there and discover you cannot connect it because the hotel requires a second login using a web browser for your room number and last name or other credentials. Your typical camera, e.g. NestCam, Arlo, etc. does not support the browser-based login.

As our kids got older, we wanted to grab dinner or a drink while they watched a movie. We needed a travel camera that would work on the hotel wi-fi. There weren’t any proven options back in the day. Our solution was to set up a Dropcam and attach it to my iPhone as a hotspot. This solution worked but was spotty when the cellular service was poor and used a lot of mobile data. Those days are gone!

The Solution

The best solution I found was connecting my travel camera to a small router in repeater mode. Repeater mode will allow you to connect the router to the hotel network, even if it has a secondary browser login. We then connect the camera to our router and we’re set. All for about $100!

The GL.iNet GL-AR750S-Ext (Slate) Gigabit Travel AC VPN Router ($60) is a great low-cost solution for the connectivity of your camera using the hotel wi-fi. For the price,it’s also a surprisingly robust router with 2.4Ghz / 5Ghz, three ethernet ports, and VPN service using OpenVPN and WireGuard.

The Wyze Cam Pan 1080p Pan/Tilt/Zoom Wi-Fi Indoor Smart Home Camera ($40) is an amazing camera for a low cost. It provides motion detection, night vision, 2-Way audio, and more.

Wyze has an excellent write-up of how to configure the router and camera here.