Customer Reviews

BlueJay BCN-501 Wireless Infrared Motion Night Vision Ethernet Color Camera w/Pan & Tilt Control

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This item caught my eye due to it's appealing price point and nice feature set. Unfortunately, it requires the included software to make it work effectively. The software does include a web server that allows viewing the camera from another computer via web browser, but the software has to be up and running on a pc somewhere on the network for this to function. Most network cameras have their own built in web server.

In addition, when viewing the camera video via browser, you cannot control pan or tilt. This can only be done within the software.

There are other pan/tilt wireless network cameras with the same feature set and same price point that can be fully controlled via browser and have better video quality. I can't recommend this one at all.

the camera did not work as stated. It completely quit working within a week. I tried to contact the company, they ignored my emails. I had to have my credit card company go after them to get my money back. When a product looks to good to be true, it usually is and this was a prime example

Just purchased and tried to configure camera - and the software failed on every level.

The Windows configuration software for the camera wouldn't recognize my network card (on three different PCs) and therefore would not let me setup the camera. When I figured out the IP address of the camera and used IE8 to connect, the ActiveX control for the video viewer would not load for security reasons. Then tried to configure the camera to use WiFi and it would not connect.

Very frustrating and useless. E-mail only support based in Taiwan, so hoping that they will respond to my request for help.

I tried to get this run on my Windows 7 64 bit machine but the software wasn't able to find my network card. I ran XP mode within Win7, and was able to run the software, so it seems to be an issue with the software. But who wants to run a virtualized OS in order to run a program? Luckily I had an older computer with XP and was able to set up the camera using the software.

When I finally did get the camera to work, I found these shortcomings:
1) The color looks terrible. Something brown looks blue. (The infrared is off.) It seems like a software problem, but the software is so bad, that it is not possible to fix.
2) There's no audio. This isn't so much a deficiency of the camera since the product description never states it did have audio. I bought this camera to use a secure way to watch my baby but without audio, the camera isn't a great baby monitor. I just assumed the camera which is my own fault. I'm letting everyone aware of it in case they too thought this had audio.
3) Support is beyond terrible. It's non existent. I emailed support with no response. I tried calling the company's phone number but it has been disconnected.
4) Setting up the camera is a chore. I was eventually able to set it up so I can view the camera thru my browser over the network, but I have not been able to set it up to view over the Internet.
5) No Windows 7 support - at least in my experience. The company's website only states support up to Vista and does not list Windows7.


If the camera's picture quality was better and the support was also better, then I might be able to recommend this product. But I cannot.

I would recommend sticking with a name brand as you're more likely to get better support and firmware is more likely to be updated more often.