2 Pack - Foscam FI8905W Outdoor Wireless/Wired IP Camera Waterproof with 30 Meter Night Vision and 6mm Lens (42? Viewing Angle)- Silver

by Foscam

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B0055JFWMW
• Item model number: FI8905W
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
  • #14 in Camera & Photo > Surveillance Cameras > Bullet Cameras
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 12, 2011

Product Description

The Foscam FI8905 is a wireless or wired IP camera solution for outdoor use. It combines a high quality digital video camera 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 FI8905 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 FI8905W IP camera can reach up to 30 meters of visibility in absolute darkness with 60 infrared LED's.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best outdoor camera for the bucks. Pretty easy to setup too!, August 12, 2011

By 

D. Leonardo (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 2 Pack - Foscam FI8905W Outdoor Wireless/Wired IP Camera Waterproof with 30 Meter Night Vision and 6mm Lens (42? Viewing Angle)- Silver (Electronics)

I usually don't write review on Amazon but I specifically want to spend some time to review this product. So, I was looking into an outdoor camera for my house, after much research, I decided to get Foscam for their quality and value. I saw in this review, there are a lot of people having problem setting up their camera which includes an IT guy. I'm myself an IT guy so I was kinda worry when I saw that kind of feedback from other IT guy.

So after I order and received this camera, I got it working right away and set wireless, virtual server (port forwarding), giving dynamic DNS, etc. in about 30 mins. I don't even install the included software. Seems pretty straight forward to me. So here's the step I did.
1. Plug the camera using the power supply to an outlet and the CAT5 cable to the back of your router.
2. Go to your router backend (usually 192.168.0.1), login and see from status if there's a new device attached to it (the camera name itself as "UNKNOWN" or simply no name), you should see some IP like 192.168.0.101, etc.
3. To test it, go to the IP you see on the browser ex. [...] - if it loads up then you are good!
4. Then you login to the camera backend interface as "admin" with no password, from there I setup my WiFi
5. You need to click scan twice in order to saw the access point list, once it show up, choose your connection and put in your WEP or WPA key if you have your WiFi secured then hit submit
6. To test your WiFi, just disconnect the CAT5 cable and then the power supply then reconnect it again. Wait for a little while and go back to your router management website and see if there's any new Wireless device connected.
7. Once you see the new wireless device, write down the IP and try to connect using your browser.
8. After that you can use DHCP reservation to make sure your camera have static private IP. Remember: Wireless and Wired connection have different MAC address so make sure you reserve the correct one (you should be able to see the MAC address for wireless and wired at the back of your camera, top right is for wireless)
9. Setup a virtual server / port forwarding so anytime you want to access the camera from the Internet anywhere in the world, you could do that. For example, forward any port 7000 to your camera IP ex. 192.168.0.101 and port 80. Then setup a dynamic DNS from your router so it will be easier to remember (most router should support it, I know my DIR-601 does). If not, then you can setup up the dynamic DNS within that camera itself.
10. Setup your mail settings / FTP settings from the camera backend, remember you have to hit submit first after you enter the information BEFORE you can hit the test button.
11. I have tried using motion detection and it send out to my email just fine.

I guess that's it. I think it took me longer to write this review than setting up the camera but I hope you guys can learn more from this.

Some people may deduct 1 start because the manual is almost useless and written with poor English. But any IT guy should be able to do it without even reading the manual. The product itself is great and the night vision is awesome (I just wish there's a switch to turn off the night vision so it doesn't show glowing red at night when I don't want to use it).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars nice cameras for the price, December 24, 2011

By 

G. Jeronowitz (Mesa, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 2 Pack - Foscam FI8905W Outdoor Wireless/Wired IP Camera Waterproof with 30 Meter Night Vision and 6mm Lens (42? Viewing Angle)- Silver (Electronics)

Setup requires you to connect via ethernet, and find the IP address of the camera (If you run windows, they provide a utility for this step). I had to access my router to get the IP address of the camera.
The UI is fairly straightforward for setup, and is very responsive. It would be nice if the documentation described the APIs that are used on the camera to make settings changes so one could script them, but this isn't difficult to figure out if you know what you're doing (I needed to change the brightness settings from daytime to nighttime automatically).

The mounts supplied with the cameras get the job done, but are a little flimsy, relying on friction from drawing two opposing plates together against a ball joint to prevent movement. I had to use a small pliers to get the mount to a point where it was not moving.

While the housing itself seems quite weatherproof, there are several connectors that hang off the unit, ethernet, reset, sound, power, and I am unclear as to the suitability of those connectors to weather exposure. In my application, however, I can get those connectors to a dry place.

The antennas on these units are fixed at a right angle. They can only be adjusted by rotating the mounting nut. There are other brands of this type of camera that allow the mounting nut to be fully tightened but still allow the antenna to rotate on two axis for best signal strength.

The IR emitters are quite bright, but are narrowly focused. With the 6mm lens that shipped with my cameras (I was expecting the 3.6mm lenses) the field of view would be completely illuminated by the emitters. With the 2.8mm lenses I have since installed in the units, there is a very distinct illuminated circle in the center of my image at night. This is no fault of the camera, as the 2.8mm lens is well outside the design parameters of the camera.

For me, the cameras shipped with outdated firmware. Foscam's website has an update available but to get it you must enter your email address and sign up for their newsletter via email; they then email you the links to the firmware update. Seems kind of scummy to me, firmware updates should be freely downloadable from the website without having to agree to get newsletter spam.

Cameras that do what these do, from brand name sources, cost upwards of $300 and don't have much better image quality from what I've seen.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic for long range, but has narrow viewing angle as a result, December 10, 2011

By 

A. Pinner (Southeast USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 2 Pack - Foscam FI8905W Outdoor Wireless/Wired IP Camera Waterproof with 30 Meter Night Vision and 6mm Lens (42? Viewing Angle)- Silver (Electronics)

I have set up the 905, 904, and the indoor 918.
I am not an employee of foscam. I am not a computer savy person. I am a scientist. I have never set up a wireless IP camera before...and just got a smartphone last month. So, you could say a am truly a newb in the wifi world.
That said... each of those models have been great. I struggled with getting the cameras to go wireless, and did contact customer service at foscam (several were purchased through foscam, several through amazon). They were helpful, but couldn't get them to work either. I finally found the silly error we were making (my fault) and now they are working perfectly. Now I can get a new camera to go wireless and recording out of the box within 5min. It takes longer to find a spot to mount than it does to set up. The Blue Iris software is a great additional purchase from foscam and helps with all the quirks in recording, etc... and think that is a must with these cameras.

In order to set these up, you will need to know your router's username/password...your SSID, your shared key, and your security settings. You will need to port forward (and/or set up as a virtual server). Foscam will help if you purchase directly from them, but the instructions are outlined very clearly in the manuals.

The 905 has a much longer range of sensitivity (than the 904)...which is longer than even the mega bright IR lights will reach at night. But as a result it has a much narrower angle of coverage...even when I pull back the protective rain shield. I would definitely recommend this camera for long range purposes.

See also my other reviews for the other models I mentioned.