Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle)

by Foscam

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 7.4 inches ; 14.7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B0046710G6
• Item model number: FI8918W
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (557 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
  • #28 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Digital Cameras
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 6, 2010

Product Description

Replacing the Foscam FI8908W, the FI8918W is this latest camera from Foscam. The FI8918W is a wireless or wired, pan/tilt IP camera solution for indoor use. It combines a high quality digital video camera, remote pan/tilt ability with network connectivity and a powerful web server to bring clear video to your desktop or smartphone from anywhere on your local network or over the Internet. The high quality video image is transmitted with 30fps speed on the LAN/WAN by using MJPEG hardware compression technology. The image resultion is 640 x 480 (300k Pixels). The Foscam FI8918W camera is based on the TCP/IP standard. The control, management and maintenance of the camera is done simply by using your browser to remotely configure and upgrade the firmware. The Foscam FI8918W IP camera can reach up to 8 meters of visibility in absolute darkness with 11 infrared LED's.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

377 of 395 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to setup, a clear picture (even in the dark), remote viewing and low cost makes this camera an excellent choice., October 19, 2010

By 

Jackie - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) (Electronics)

Summary: Overall this camera does everything well, and for the price, nothing comes close.

Setup was quick and painless. I plugged the camera into my router with the included cable and after checking my router settings for the IP address, I could access the camera straight from a browser. On the settings page I only modified the username/password, adjusted the pan/tilt speed and added my wireless settings. There are a lot of other options, but these are the basics to get up and running and allow placement of the camera anywhere within range of your wireless router with only the power adapter.

The picture is clear and works in all light conditions from total darkness to daylight. The IR is very useful in both of my toddlers rooms at night. The wide angle allows me to see a lot and with the pan/tilt I can see everything.

We have iPhones and we use an app called "Foscam Surveillance". It works well with these cameras (including the pan/tilt function) and is only $5. We can also access these cameras from outside our home over the internet either from a browser on say my computer at work or using the app on my iPhone. My husband set that up, send me a message and I will see if I can have him post some instructions on how to do that. It's great for checking on the kids when they are with the sitter or knowing that our home is safe when we are gone on the weekends. The peace of mind has been priceless for us.

My husband and I already had a few of the previous model, the Foscam FI8908W. Although not a giant leap, there are some definite improvements that make this a worthwhile upgrade. Some improvements are:
1.) Increased pan/tilt range and speed settings (fast is nice when following a running child!)
2.) Slightly improved look and smaller size
3.) Replaced the activity light on the front of the camera with an additional IR LED
4.) The onboard speaker and microphone have much clearer sound than the old model and are accompanied by additional audio input and output jacks on the back to allow an external speaker and/or microphone.
5.) Ability to turn off the IR LEDs from the web interface

Conclusion: My husband and I have found this IP camera is easy to setup and works well to remotely view areas around our home. Believe me when I say we did a lot of research, and for the price, nothing comes close to this IP camera.

125 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to be an tech-but...., November 16, 2010

By 

Katherine (Sutton, VT, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) (Electronics)

If you have never interfaced with your router's software before (and you are not brave!) than this might not be for you. It is not hard to set up. You plug in its AC adapter and plug it into your router. Follow the instructions and wow.
The picture is wonderful. The motion alarm is fantastic. We placed on of these inside our barn across the street from our home, about 350 feet away. We added an $80. antenna to our router from Hawking, also available on Amazon, and poof! I can now see what all the sqwak is at 2AM in my barn with out walking all the way out there! Wow, wow, wow. The pan and tilt features are really nice. We setup another at our front door, and three "out door" styles around the outside of the property. I don't know how long this black "indoor" will last in the extreme temps and humitity of our barn and front porch, but that is not Foscam's problem. I will update at the end of the winter, or sooner if they die during winter!

4/3/11 Well they made it through the winter. We have been able to review motion detection alarm triggered video clips that were saved on our pc. We have been able to remote pan across the barn to see who is making all the racket and why. It is lovely to know who has been on your porch while you were sleeping! The cameras are wonderful. the there is an antenna you can get on amazon that will extend you wireless cababilities. We view the inside and outside of our barn across the street. These are great.

179 of 192 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Active X Controls crash and freeze Window 7, December 18, 2010

By 

Andy "Computer Enthusiast" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) (Electronics)

I really wanted to love this camera, the feature set appeared to be excellent. The set up was fairly simple to set up a static IP address and I even gave it a higher port number. It did work well in Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but the most advanced features like sound and better quality picture appear to be in Internet Explorer. I even got it to work via my iPhone. The problem I have is the constant freezing upon logging via Internet Explorer on my Windows 7 Laptops. I'm running both 32 bit and 64 bit IE. I looked for solutions and saw users have been experiencing IE issues with the buggy Active X controls since Vista.

I'm on the fence if I should keep this Wireless IP Cam, since the Activex code crashes on both my laptops and freezes them. I'm sick of having to reboot. It's very annoying, but I'm not sure if I really need the audio anyway, I'm more interested in photos and ability to ftp, and email pictures to an account. It's annoying since I even upgraded the firmware to the most current version and tried to follow all the useless instructions of disabling firewalls, disabling antivirus, and allowing all active x controls even whitelisted the IP in a trusted zone. NOTHING WORKED. So far the Active x controls are the only thing broken, besides two IR lamps seem to dim compared to the rest, the ability to pan and tilt are excellent. Image Quality is fair, seems almost better in the dark, but in the dark it's black and white.

Update:
I decided to keep the Camera. I've noticed it seems to go into a "look" mode randomly moving everywhere occasionally, but overall I'm happy with the product. I signed up for the free dynamic dns account, then put the info in my Verizon Fios Router and Foscam settings. I also used my ISP and set up an FTP Account. I also enabled UPnP, which allowed me to set up the port forwarding rules in my Verizon Router. I'm using a higher 4 digit port number ending in zero so I can add additional cams in the future. Other then the remote control with Internet Explorer, I was able to get all the other features to work, including motion detection, emailing via the SMTP settings (used my ISP again), and FTP of any activity out to my account (my hosting ISP is Bluehost - which allowed me to configure the FTP and SMTP info very easily).

Let me know if you require any assistance configuring settings, it's convenient to access via Dynamic DNS Address or directly via the IP Address (must add high port to each to connect). The 5 dollar iPhone app is also a nice access option.

If they resolve the Win 7 Active X issues or allow sound via other browsers, I'll raise my review. Also we'll see how the quality holds up over time.