Best pet camera for Great Danes

A Great Dane throws up an interesting camera challenge — most pet cameras are designed with small-to-medium dogs in mind, so getting the full height of a dog that can stand 80–90cm at the shoulder means thinking carefully about both lens angle and mounting height. Pet cameras range from basic motion-activated models to two-way audio and treat-dispensing versions, and the right choice really depends on what you want to do with it. To point you in the right direction: is this mainly for checking in and keeping an eye on them, or do you want to be able to interact — talk to them, hear them? And whereabouts are you planning to mount it — a shelf, the wall, a corner?

That's exactly the right instinct — a camera mounted at standard shelf height just catches a Great Dane mid-torso at best. For a wall mount in a living room, you want something with a wide field of view, a decent pan-and-tilt range so you can sweep the room, and ideally a manual or app-controlled tilt that lets you angle down from height without losing the full body in frame. How high are your ceilings, roughly — standard 2.4m or something higher? That'll affect where I'd suggest positioning it.

Good call on the height — at 1.8–2m up on a wall with a downward tilt, you'll get his full height in frame without wasting the top half of the shot on ceiling. For this I'd go with the TP-Link Tapo C200. It has a 360-degree pan and 114-degree wide-angle lens, full 1080p, and crucially it has motorised pan-and-tilt you control through the app — so once it's wall-mounted you can dial in the exact angle to frame him properly. It's also very reliable on motion detection, which is handy if you want alerts when he's on the move. It comes with a standard bracket that works well on a wall mount at that height, and it's around £25–30 on Amazon UK, so it won't break the bank. The two-way audio is there if you want to use it, but it works just as well as a straightforward monitoring camera if that's all you need.

It's a fair concern. The Tapo C200 lets you adjust the motion sensitivity in the app, so you can dial it down if it's triggering too often or up if it's missing things. With a Great Dane-sized dog there's usually plenty of movement to detect — the bigger issue people have is cameras set too sensitive picking up shadows or light changes. Start on medium sensitivity and adjust from there. You can also set activity zones in the app, so you can focus detection on the part of the room he actually uses and ignore, say, a window with passing traffic outside. Works well in practice.

Happy to help. One last tip — when you're setting it up, put your phone on the live view and have someone stand roughly where your dog would be while you angle the bracket. Takes about two minutes and saves you repositioning it three times. Enjoy keeping tabs on him.