You do not need a $30 pet camera and another app to keep an eye on your cat. A spare phone you already own, pointed at the spot your cat loves, plus one sentence in plain English, can text you the moment something actually happens instead of asking you to watch a feed all day.
The usual advice is to buy a Wyze or a Tapo cam, and those are genuinely fine for a quick live peek. The catch is that a live feed only helps when you are looking at it. Nobody sits and watches their cat for eight hours, so you end up opening the app a few times, seeing him asleep, and closing it none the wiser about the moment that mattered. What you really want to know is the specific thing: did he eat, did he get on the counter, has he been hiding somewhere new since this morning.
AI Vision Monitor uses a vision AI model that understands what it is looking at. You point any spare phone at your cat's usual area and write the trigger yourself, in normal language:
The app checks the scene at the interval you choose and keeps previous frames for context, so a cat wandering through the room does not ping you, but the thing you asked about does. You get one useful message instead of forty motion alerts.
With a light AI model (0.5 credits per check) and a check every 30 minutes across an 8-hour workday:
16 checks x 0.5 credits = 8 credits, about 0.01 euro per day on the 2.50 euro starter pack.
New users get 50 free credits, enough to watch for weeks before paying anything. No card required, no subscription ever, and it reuses a phone you already have.
Get it on Google Play iOS Beta (TestFlight)
Do I need a special pet camera?
No. Any spare Android phone or tablet is the whole setup. No pet cam to buy, no hub, no wiring, no subscription.
Will my cat walking around cause constant false alarms?
No. This is not a motion switch. The AI evaluates your described condition against the scene, with previous frames as context, so only the situation you actually asked about will alert you.
Does it work offline?
The phone needs internet. Analysis runs server side, which is exactly why an old device works fine as a cat camera.
Can it replace a vet or a pet sitter?
No, and it is not meant to. It is a spare-phone way to get a plain-language heads up about one thing you care about. For anything medical, or for feeding, water, and litter over more than a day or two, you still want a real person checking in.