4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Inexpensive outdoor camera, functions well but lack of bells and whistles can be irritating, June 6, 2009
This review is from: 4UCAM Outdoor Indoor Wireless Pan & Tilt IP Network Video Camera Color, Motion detect (Electronics)
I've been looking for a webcam I could put outside for a long time. My nearly ancient X.10 IR camera had lousy reception problems and I never felt comfortable putting it outside. This product was a perfect match from its specifications.
It took me a couple of hair-pulling, grumble-filled nights to get it to work. You *really* want to read the manual; it has some key things that to me fall into the "why the heck do I have to worry about that???" category. For me, it was the fact that the wifi IP address could not be on the same segment as the ethernet network IP address. Using my Macbook Pro, I was able to use its ethernet to configure (using VMware Fusion for the Windows guest OS, as accessing this camera does require the use of Internet Explorer) everything, but the major problem I have with its wifi support is that it only does WEP. The camera admin interface does have a means to install an upgrade, so I'm hoping that one of these days, there will be an update to install to rectify this almost unforgivable lack of reasonably modern standard compliance.
And the OCX driver plugin for IE is finicky at best. You really do need to let it sit for several minutes (why, I can't fathom) before the video feed works, and it seems to assume IE 6, as IE 7 was finicky even with patience and IE 8 requires the compatibility mode.
My ultimate desire is to set up my Linux server to be able to fetch images automatically so I can keep a running archive of what's going on out back, but that was most definitely not an advertised feature so I am not dinging this camera at all on how hard that may be (as, really, all of the work is done with the OCX IE plugin).
All in all, it is a neat camera, and it's very attractively priced. But don't get this if you don't mind spending a few hours getting things set up. I really wish there was a way to at least view the image feed with other browsers, too. That's a software issue, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
Update after half a year: this camera is most definitely not waterproof. Not sure if water came in from the external interface area (rear) or the seal broke on the screw-off housing, but said housing became a bathtub for the now dead camera. It was mounted on a vertical beam underneath my deck and the mounting bracket is not big enough to let the camera sit horizontally. So beware, if you plan on putting this outside.
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