Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(184)
4 star:		(166)
3 star:		(59)
2 star:		(53)
1 star:		(95)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Length:: 1:15 Mins

Was looking for a wireless camera to use to try to figure out what dog was making a mess on our front lawn. Bought this Foscam based on the Amazon reviews, and was not disappointed. Positioned it on the inside window sill in our living room, and before 4pm the same day, caught my neighbors dog (dogs) doing their business on our yard. This is exactly the proof I was looking for. The camera worked like a champ!

It took me about an hour or so to figure out the wireless settings and the alarm mode (motion detection). If you are running windows 7, you need to read the manual about how to add the IP address to your Internet Explorer trusted sites. Once I did that, I could set the folder where the video's are sent direct to my PC.

Picture quality is just fine. Although, the IR mode does not work when viewing through a window pane as I am. The lights just reflect off the glass. Otherwise (daytime) the quality is very good as you can see in my sample video.

There are a ton of well-written reviews for this camera (also check out the other versions, e.g. FI8918W White, FI8905W) that give an excellent sense of its many strengths, minor weaknesses, as well as tips for setting up IP cameras in general. I won't rehash the basics, but I will give a brief overview of my setup. Then I'll make a comment on security, and finally go through some of the ways you can extend this camera's capabilities. This last section is where the Foscam truly shines, in my opinion. After all, if I just wanted a no-hassle cam/DVR, I could get something more basic (but much more expensive) off the shelf at Costco or through a residential security company.

If you have any questions, just comment on this review. I'm happy to respond.

Setup:
The setup process was very standard for any sort of web-enabled device. It'll take a bit longer if you've never gone through the steps before, but once you do it, you'll know how to set up a whole slew of similar devices (e.g. home webserver, media servers, etc.). There are literally hundreds of great tutorials on all of these topics around the web, so if any step or terminology is confusing, just google it and you'll find a bunch of good links. (i.e. don't get deterred by reviews that say "bad instruction manual" or "bad customer service", since you won't need either if you have the whole internet and the power of google at your fingertips). Anyway, here is the rough outline of the setup process for me:

1. Connected Foscam via LAN cable, checked "DHCP clients" list on router (I have a MacBook Pro and an Airport Extreme router) to get local Foscam IP, and then typed this into my web browser to get to the Foscam web interface. Alternatively, use the little utility included with the Foscam to get to the same place.
2. Added a new login/password, deleted admin login, and set up wifi access in the Foscam settings. Then disconnected from LAN and moved Foscam to the desired location. Plug it back in and now it's working via wireless.
3. Went into my router's settings and assigned a static IP to the Foscam's wifi MAC address (note: this MAC is different from the ethernet MAC). This is done with "DHCP Reservations" on the Airport, but of course the exact label will vary by router. Now the Foscam web interface will always be accessible at the same local address within my home network.
4. To get external access outside of my home network, I went into my router's "Port Forwarding" settings and forwarded some external port to port 80 at the static local IP of the Foscam.
5. Since I have a residential internet provider, my external IP is dynamic, which means it could potentially change. To get around this, signup for a free dyndns account. Then just use the updater client on the Foscam, itself, or one of many others that are available for free for mac, windows, and linux.

Security:
This is a bit confusing since the Foscam advertises "encryption". The part that IS secure is the Foscam's communication to/from your router via wifi. This is very good, and considering how easy it is to snoop traffic over an unprotected or WEP-protected wifi (there are even NYTimes articles describing the basics!), I would consider this a mandatory feature of any IP cam. While this is excellent to have, if you choose to make your Foscam web interface accessible from the outside internet (i.e. you did port forwarding), then this connection is public and completely unencrypted. Firstly, this means you should immediately add a new user in the Foscam settings and then delete the admin login. Even once this step is done, it means that there will be no little "lock" symbol in your browser indicating SSL encryption, and your new login/password and video stream will still be sent in the clear. This doesn't bother everyone, but if it does, you can use a computer on your home network to set up a VPN or SSH tunnel (easier) to make the connection encrypted (or just disable external access completely if you don't need this feature). At any rate, it's good to be aware of this limitation at least.

Enhancing functionality:
- Misc information on advanced features - There is a lot of useful information about these Foscams, including some more advanced topics, scattered around on various blogs and forums. Here are a couple (I'm sure google will find even more): gadgetvictims dot com, forum dot networkwebcams dot com, networkcamerareviews dot com.
- mangocam dot com - Free online storage for your cam stream. What's the point of having a security camera if the crooks steal all your computers with the footage!? This site just popped up with a free public beta, so it's definitely worth checking out. Sort of like the built-in FTP/email features taken to a whole new level.
- Smartphone apps - A neat way to check in on your cams remotely (but see important security note, above). IP Cam Viewer Lite works great for Android, and other reviews mention other apps for iPhone, etc.
- ZoneMinder - The holy grail for getting the most out of your cam. This is a free and open-source web application for managing your cam feeds. It is sort of like mangocam, but you install it yourself on your own webserver, and it does a whole lot more. For instance, you can define different motion detection "zones" in the image. Maybe zone #1 is the whole image, zone #2 is just a doorway, and zone #3 is a tree that is always moving in the wind. Then you can define all sorts of complex filters, like 1) Record a section of video footage when there is any motion in zone #1, excluding zone #3, or 2) Record a section of video footage when there is any motion in zone #2, but only during work hours on weekdays; then automatically send some still screenshots to my email and upload a movie of the event to some off-site server. Wow...the options are truly endless! With just this program, some $200 linux boxes, and some Foscams, you could start a business setting up surveillance systems for people!

Pros:
* Excellent camera,
* excellent price,
* lots of features,
* 1 year warranty,
* some Amazon buyers complained of knock-off cameras from Amazon sellers - luckily I got a real one from seller "DBROTH".

Cons:
* printed manual in box is poorly written by someone who clearly does not speak English very well (good thing there's a detailed user manual on the included CD that is written a lot better),
* no SSL SMTP support (can't use your gmail account, only non SSL email accounts for emailed pictures) although you could use STunnel if you wanted to use your gmail bad enough (but you'd need to be an expert to set up STunnel with gmail),
* does not capture video when motion sensor is tripped. Ideally it should record a 30sec video clip and upload that instead of snapping away 6 pictures within 6 seconds, at approximately 60 second intervals. I would have preferred a little more freedom on options with that feature.
[EDIT: 01/04/2011] Now that I've had more time to experiment, actually, it does do a 60 second video clip BUT ONLY if you have an Internet Explorer browser open and logged in to the camera. Then, on that computer where the browser is open, there will be a 60 second video clip saved when the motion trips the camera. Great thing for me is that if someone breaks in my home and steals the camera and my computers, I still have the photo snapshots of them when they tripped the alarm, since those are sent out immediately upon the trip. The plan is to keep a browser window connected to the camera from work, so if my computer at home is stolen, I'll have the video clip as well. This camera would be even more awesome if it would FTP those video clips out just like it emails out the snap shots.

Tips:
Use the detailed user manual on the CD - not the printed manual in the box. The printed manual is terrible and flawed. If you are doing the emailed-motion-alarm-trip option, make sure you click the submit button before you click the test button, and do this each time you make a change to any of the mail settings on that page. You may have to turn on SSID broadcasting if you have it turned off in your router settings, just so the camera can identify your network during initial setup (that's not the camera's fault). There are 2 mac addresses for this camera; 1 for hard wired, and 1 for WIFI, so don't get them mixed up. If you are not familiar with port forwarding, or DYNDNS, get a tech savvy person to help you on this one. Don't expect things from this camera that are not advertised (i.e. plug and play, outdoor use, 360 degree pan, zoom, High Definition in low light conditions, infinity distance coverage in complete darkness, DOLBY audio from the mic/speaker, expecting to not be stopped by a company firewall which has absolutely nothing to do with this camera, expecting it to work flawlessly in every web browser known to man). I wanted to mention that much because a lot of the negative commentary was undeserved.

I am an IT Professional and I was looking for a camera that could be used to monitor a baby room as well and be moved and placed around the house or as a security camera in the future. I had tried other cameras from Cisco and such and they were all good for the price. I was blown away though by the fact that for the same price range I not only got a security camera but this one has features that others do not have as far as hardware goes. Namely it has pan/tilt and night vision IR LEDs and can really see well in complete darkness of a whole room! Other cameras were simply a great camera but did not move so adjusting where it was pointed was difficult and could not see a whole room. I can remotely move the camera around (no zoom though which is the only bad point) from my PC and it has other CGI script function which I got from the Foscam support people to imbed the video and/or single frames into a web page.

It should be noted that this is better hardware-feature-wise as the software is overly simple in many ways and does require some knowledge of DDNS and port forwarding for over the internet viewing. Other software packages such as those from Cisco/Linksys are much more robust and offer simple setups. The Foscam software does a great job with everything you would expect it to have including setting up logins and limited controls for multiple users and stuff but you need to know a little bit about what you are doing first.

Overall this is the best camera for the price hardware-wise. If you are looking for something overly simple to setup and get all the features handed to you this is not for you. You will however get everything you need and want (except zoom and RTSP for mobile streaming) with this camera.

Not only was this camera easy to configure, it is, amazingly, nearly completely Mac supported and runs outside of IE, two features I have struggled to find in nearly any other device. Even the iPhone app, available in iTunes, is a sweet find. I'm to understand this cross platform approach is a new development for this device and if it indicates what we have to expect from the software developers of this company, I'm stoked!

Pros:
Easy setup
Quiet, responsive movement
Good picture quality
Great night vision
Cross platform AND browser support (no need for active x for nearly anything!)
Auto detects wireless network settings

Cons (minor):
No ssl login (user name and password passed plain text)
No color adjustment (and mine could use it)
No zoom
It's not a unicorn with wings that also lays golden eggs

I have several IP cameras that allow me to see my home from anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection.

The Foscam FI8918W is THE most feature rich of them, and its price is the lowest!

Unfortunately, you are pretty much on your own when it comes down to setting up the camera, and unless you are well versed in TCP/IP networking, this is not a trivial matter.

Other vendors such as Lorex and Archerfish offer free technical support. Typically, they will use a remote control software to setup everything for you.

If you did not buy the FOSCAM IP camera from Foscam's U.S. website directly, you will not get Foscam's free technical support. Of course, you'll have to pay the full price of $150 for FI8918W for this privilege, instead of Amazon's $100 or less.

Instead, Foscam requires you to obtain technical support from the seller whom you got the camera from.

In my case, the seller was Vairocana Group Inc. It was unable to provide any help at all.

I urge the customer to ask the seller BEFORE purchase on Amazon if the seller can provide technical support. In all likelihood, they just sell stuff and are not able to help.

This is an excellent IP camera even at $150. If you need multiple cameras, one work-around is to buy ONE camera from Foscam US to get the free technical support, then buy the rest on Amazon to save money.

I'll make this short and to the point. I'm using this camera with OS X 10.6.6 and it works... to an extent. The camera has a lot of features for the money. Unfortunately, however, to take advantage of all those features you really need to use Internet Explorer as most features require ActiveX. The ability to link up multiple cameras, to hear sound from the internal mic, and setup per user accounts are all really nice features, but can only be taken advantage of via Internet Explorer and ActiveX.

About the only thing you can do with this camera in a non-IE browser is view video, which works well and serves my purpose as I just want to monitor my 2 yr old daughter at night in her bedroom. It's really ashame though that in this era of multiple browsers that a majority of this camera's features are hampered by its dependency on Internet Explorer/ActiveX.