Customer Reviews

Panasonic BB-HCM511A Network Camera with Two-Way Audio

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For a while the Panasonic BL-C111a and BL-C131a were my favorite of the Panasonic lineup for monitoring the pets and vacation house. Now I discovered the BB-HCM511A and this amazing little cam is THE BEST! It has a 1/4" CCD detector instead of a 1/6" CMOS in many of the other models. I can get a night time view of the ranch because the CMOS goes down to 0.2 lux instead of 3 lux. That's about the limit of human night vision, or a moonlit night. I couldn't do that before with the BL-C111a cam that this replaced. Also the CMOS sensor has much better dynamic range, which simply means more colors. So whereas with the BL-C111a the shades of green on the plants look flat, the BB-HCM5111a gives the scene much more definition with all different shades: slightly bluish green, slightly reddish green etc. and this has the visual effect as if it had greater resolution. I love the PoE feature because I can just run a network cable without running a separate power cable. To take advantage of this you need a cheap PoE injector or a fancier switch that supports PoE. I use the SMC GS8P-Smart switch for PoE, which is a newer model router with good reviews. I also use the CoconutView Vista sidebar gadget so I can always see all of my Panasonic cams on my desktop. To download this gadget go to the Microsoft Windows Live Gallery on the web and search for CoconutView or Panasonic. There's also an outdoor model, the BB-HCM531a but it's almost twice as expensive and from the installation manual it appears that the BB-HCM531a just has a cover on the back that you screw on and tape over the cables to protect the connectors from moisture. So I think this one is a better value for placing under eaves and protected outdoor sites, unless your plan to install it where it will be directly exposed to pouring rain. Ok just buy it, you will be happy with this cam.

Overall it is a nice product. My complaints so far are poor documentation for multiple camera configuration and the requirement of ActiveX for audio support.

If you have multiple cameras, the documentation for configuring this is poor. What you need to know is that each camera needs to be assigned a different IP address AND a different TCP port number. If you have 2 cameras, one can be 192.168.1.252:50252 and the other 192.168.1.253:50253 (for example). You can use the local address when accessing at home. When not at home, you will use your external fixed IP address plus each port to identify the cameras individually. Single camera setup is easy and the supplied software does it for you. But to have multiple cameras it is better to assign static addresses and port numbers as described above.

My second complaint is more serious than poor documentation. The audio feature requires ActiveX and thus will only work on Microsoft Windows OS with Internet Explorer. If you have Linux, Mac or even use Mozilla as your browser on MS Windows, you won't have any audio.

I've tried four different Panasonic webcams as well as some from other vendors, and this one is the best and well worth the price. I put a 16GB SDHC Trancender memory card in it, and can buffer 3964 20-sec 320x240 video clips or 2615 10-sec 640x480 clips. I have three motion triggers set up: the first buffers local video clips; the second sends me an email with a 320x240 image with a 10-minute time-out between emails; and the third buffers 640x480 still images. The last one has already buffered 111,321 640x480 images in addition to the stored video.

The night color vision option is fantastic. It automatically switches to a more sensitive mode when the light level drops. I can place small nite lights around the house rather than leaving the main lights on all night.

I also have a log of all camera activity from each camera emailed to me every day at midnight. A problem with the logs is that only the last 50 events are stored and included in the email. A single pet-sitter visit can easily generate more than 50 triggered events. Since you can only have one copy of the logs emailed to you each day per camera, the number of events in the log should be enough to cover the entire day. I called Panasonic about it and they told me that the alarm logs were limited to 50, and that I could change my trigger settings or have each trigger email me. I explained to them why both of those options would not work for me. This is a serious design problem with this camera.

I recently took a trip and found out that my pet-sitter was not doing the job I hired her to do. Since I will be traveling world-wide quite a bit in the next year, I am going to expand my system to the full 16 cameras to monitor my entire house while I am gone. I have 8 cameras now, and have not experienced any problems with bandwidth.

I also have a Brinks/Broadview system with entry and motion detection, but it's really nice to be able to look at any part of my house and know what is or has gone on there from anywhere, anytime.

I do wish this camera was a little less conspicuous, but otherwise it is a great security camera! My biggest fear is that someone will break in and steal my cameras, along with their internal memory; however, I am working on a way to send the buffered videos to an offsite location, in addition to the current emailed images.

This Panasonic Network Camera had the features that I wanted. Allow me to warn you, there is no zoom, however, you can switch from a default resolution of 320x240 to 640 X 480. Unless you are prepared to pay a much larger price, the zooms you get will be digital and not optical. That means the picture will be bigger, but it will also be grainier. Second, set-up required a call to technical support, however, Panasonic was great and it was up and running in under an hour. Panasonic provides a free webservice for this camera as well as most if not all of their network cameras. The necessary software is housed in the camera!! Once you configure web access, you have the option of sharing the URL with friends and family (up to 50). As each person hits the URL, they are presented with a password dialog. I set up two guest accounts that have differing levels of control over the camera. I grant no one the ability to tilt or pan and no one can listen. Even with those limitations, many of my associates tune into my puppy cam and watch the show. There is an integrated microphone that is good enough for most purposes. By attaching an inexpensive pair of computer speakers, you gain the ability to speak through the camera. I once caught my Doberman digging in the carpet. When she heard my voice come out of the blue and tell her to stop, she jumped, looked around, and STOPPED digging.
With my administrative password, I have full control of the camera and I've been able to put my mind at ease concerning my pets. This camera is really intended as a Security Camera and it would do a great job for that purpose as well. The web interface allows for simultaneous viewing of multiple cameras. Before you blow half the price on a camera that looks "high tech" but is not reliable and can't pan or tilt as far, I suggest that you look carefully at the specs of the cameras side by side. If you can afford it, this is a great camera. If you want to view images in Hi-Def, you can do that... for about a thousand dollars more. If you want an opticial Zoom, expect to pay $700+ for your camera. I'm very satisfied.

Unless you read the reviews prior to purchasing, the first thing you will do after opening the box is to be surprised that the AC adaptor is not present. Apparently that is Panasonic's approach to cut costs. The power adaptor nor the cat5 network plug is included. One of these is required to power the device. If you choose to power up using only the network cable, you will also need a POE (Power over Ethernet) hub. If you don't own one (this is not just your typical hub), than be prepared to pay another $50. Save yourself time and money - order both the camera and AC adaptor together unless you already own a POE hub and your committed to buy this camera. If you choose the AC route, Panasonic requests you only use their adaptor. The item number is BB-HCA3A.

In terms of setup, required multiple calls to Panasonic tech support to get both my older and newer Panasonic camera's working on MicroSoft Internet Explorer (the fix was I needed to set "allow active content to run on file on my computer" checkbox in the tools, Internet options, advanced, security tab). I'm now able see both cams on Pansonic's viewnetcam site, and it provides nice views.

Note the HCM511 camera is not wireless like the BL-C131A, which surprised me based on the higher price for this model. What the 511 does provide is two way audio, which I really wanted for the second cam, but the wireless capability would have made it much better. Also, note that you either talk or listen, dual (asynchronous) communication is not available and requires switching between the two with some delay. More surprising, I'm finding the resolution and night time vision to be the same for both cameras. I expected improvements in this area based on a newer and more costly model. Oh well, I do like the capability to view 6 cameras on one monitor. However, if you don't need the two way audio and are already invested with Pansonic, pick one of their more reasonably priced wireless network cameras.

Update on July 1st,2011: I changed my router and needed to reconfigure my two Panosonic network cameras. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Panasonic provided telephone support even after I owned the product for more than two years - looks like they provide free lifetime support! That is very cool. Just make sure you buy the camera that is right for you.

First of all, I've worked with a variety of Panasonic's network cameras including their higher end PTZ's with optical zoom like the HCM581A so I knew what to expect from this particular camera. For myself, I wanted to setup a very simple outdoor monitoring cam for as little as possible so I bought this unit back in 2007 (am only writing up tihis review 3 years later). Yes, I know the HCM511A is specified for indoor use only but I purchased a separate outdoor smoked color security dome to house the entire unit inside and have it powered via a D-Link DWL-P200 Power Over Ethernet adapter.

Setup can be a bit daunting for the novice as there are a large number of network and camera settings including setting up user accounts (up to 50) with differing levels of access. Just as an FYI if you're computers are Mac only; the initial camera setup requires running a Windows based installer which configures the basics (after that, you can access the camera with most any modern web browser). At the time of setup, I used VMware Fusion running Windows XP on my Mac Pro and have had no problems setting up numerous Panasonic network cams running Windows 7 under VMware since then.

The picture quality and frame rates are ok in both MJPEG and MPEG-4 streaming video modes (don't expect broadcast quality or high definition). As expected, the quality drops down as the light levels decrease but the digital noise level when it is dark is tolerable and nowhere as bad as their cheaper BL-C series cameras. Enabling Color Nght View (in the setup) does help a bit in automatically brightening the cameras image when it is dark but at the cost of lowering the overall frame rate (so fast movements do look blurred). The digital zoom is for the most part useless because the zooming is done without an increase in overall resolution (meaning the resulting image looks blurry and grainy). The camera itself supports a fairly decent pan/tilt range (there is also a quick scan mode for both pan/tilt) and its home lens position is user configurable.

The camera supports a wide array of configuration options with regards to video streaming via MPEG-4 (such as setting the frame rate, ranges for bit rates for the cameras 3 image resolutions, whether not multicast streaming is enabled), and advanced options for setting the operation times of access to the camera. There is also analog output ports for audio and video which you can connect a TV or video recorder to, and an I/O interface which allows wiring things like lamps, door bells or external sensors as input (up to two) and therefore allows this camera to be used in a wide variety of applications limited only by the customers imagination and technical ingenuity.

The camera supports rudimentary (if comparing with more advanced security cameras) motion detection, triggering and image buffering. Up to 5 triggers can be created and each has a finer level of granularity in terms of when they are enabled (specific days and times of the week are allowed) meaning there is quite a bit of flexibility. The trigger itself can make use of the cameras internal motion detection sensor (both its threshold and sensitivity level can be adjusted in increments to get the desired distance and movement range), via external sensors that you setup (much more advanced for this review), or via timer settings (in 1 second, 1 minute, or 1 hour intervals). Each of these allows the buffering of 1 to 30 individual image frames OR MPEG-4 video files which can be saved to an internal SD card (not included), sent out via e-mail (user configurable), saved to an FTP server, or saved via HTTP (via web DAV).

For my application, I utilize a motion detection trigger which saves 640x480 JPEG images to an internal web DAV server (I then use shell scripts and several open source unix command line utilities which combine the time stamped images into video files). Yes, I could have used the internal MPEG-4 setting to automatically have video files saved for me but the downside of that is the video quality isn't that great due to Panasonics non-user configurable compression setting level. The motion detection trigger (if saving JPEG images) also allows pre-trigger image buffering which allows saving a range of images (up to 300 frames max) before the trigger. This is useful to capture what the camera saw before the sensor detected any motion. Where this camera is limited in terms of utilizing it for more robust security purposes is that the lens position can only be moved to one preset (which you can program for up to 20 different lens positions).

The previously mentioned I/O interface can be useful since it can be used in conjunction with the 5 allowable triggers. For just one example, a door bell can be wired as an input sensor to the camera and when triggered, the camera lens position can be pointed to the door where you can either set it to capture video, a single or sequence of images. Additionally, you could also wire up the camera up to activate a light source to blink or a bell to ring such that if the motion detector is triggered, you could be alerted to this "alarm".

The web based interface is clean and fairly intuitive. For the more advanced user, it is also configurable (the operational guide goes into detail on how to do that). For those who own an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, the Live Cams application supports and works quite well with these Panasonic network cameras and it is actually less tedious to use than the web browser interface. Finally, some very minor caveats. The PTZ operation is laggy meaning it isn't smooth like they are in higher end security cameras where the video image is still smooth during panning and tilting. The two-way audio feature also works only in Internet Explorer on Windows (no loss for me given the application that I'm using this camera for).

Overall for this price range, this camera can do quite a bit and deliver decent image/video quality for the lens/CCD sensor that is available on this unit. I'm also impressed by the reliability of these Panasonic network cams and considering that I have this particular "indoor" model deployed outside (in a fairly inexpensive non-Panasonic security dome) for the past 3 years (and counting) without any issues, I've had no problems recommending them to others so long as they are made aware of the caveats and limitations of the model in question. I gave this HCM511A a 4-star rating and docked only one star given Panasonic's Windows only support focus.

My apologies first and foremost for the rambling tendency of my reviews. I've published two images with color night mode enabled and disabled, so I'll touch on that first.

The setup so far as lighting goes is one light that comes on at dusk (Fluorescent) that's putting out the equivalent of 180 watts of light. The house across you see across the street is putting out about 600 with two high pressure sodium lights at 300 watts each. When color night mode is enabled, you can definitely see things more exposed but you're paying the price when it comes to exposure rate. With my current amount of light, color night mode is doing about 3fps, where as regular mode is doing about 15. A person walking across the frame when color night mode is on is at most going to be a blur, at least so far as I can tell. I do not yet have a SD card in the camera to capture images, so perhaps my review on that feature will change.

The camera itself was a snap to set up. I dropped a PoE line out of the front eave of my house and have the camera post hanging down from the eave itself. I wish there were a way (out of the box) to do a flush mount on the camera. Throw the disc in my PC and it was essentially one click setup to get it going. Then about 15 minutes of tweaking to get the [...] site setup. I didn't want to try to muck through it on the mac as this thing is definitely geared towards a PC, the audio feature of the camera itself pretty much needs IE to run, and I've found that in other browsers it doesn't like to center on click, you have to use the pan and tilt buttons. It'll function some of the time when clicking on the image to center, but other times it wont. It does function all the time using IE but this is definitely not my personal browser of choice. I hope Panasonic makes it more compatible for other platforms and browsers.

This is, as I know, an indoor camera but so far it's been holding up well being protected under the eave. I'm also in central Texas and it was a very humid 103 degree day outside, so this will be an endurance test of the camera as well.

The only real complaints I have about the camera are software based, so if there's enough demand features may even be added to the firmware. I'd love it this camera had a patrol mode. There is a button you can click that will do a full pan or a full tilt once, but then it centers back to where you were before. Another feature I'd like to see is for it to be able to dump video/images right to a network location. It seems that it has to buffer everything to a card first and then transfer it. If someone were looking to destroy the camera it would get you those precious few images before they could take it out, if it were to transfer directly instead of buffering on the camera itself.

Either way, with relatively few complaints from me on it and pan and tilt at this price, I definitely say get it.

I am very pleased with all aspects of this camera, I use it to monitor my farm property remotely. The setup is very easy and I have the camera setup to upload all the images to an FTP server and they are in jpeg format, I also installed a 16GB SD card because I am connected to the internet VIA satellite which has limited upload speed of 768k.

Panasonic cameras require 48 volts for POE power insertion, I purchased the PowerDsine 7001G and I had no problems using POE to power the camera. Beware that the POE on the product page is incompatible with this camera, don't use the purchase both items now or you will not be happy to find out later the POE does not work. Thanks to a previous review I went to the Panasonic site and downloded the manual to find out what the specs were to power this camera VIA POE.

Be careful that you don't purchase this camera for outdoor use, I searched the Amazon site for outdoor cameras and this camera appeared in the search results, I was looking for an outdoor camera and did not notice that this one is for indoor use only, but it all worked out in the end because I needed another indoor camera as it turned out. I later purchased the 531 cam for outdoor use and I am waiting for it to come in.

I would recommend this camera to anyone looking for good quality images and the ease of use for the price, it is a full featured IP Cam for the price. This Camera is best for Home use, I would not use this for large business applications and IMO it was not designed for commercial use.

The HCM511A did not come with a power supply, could not use it out of the box. Opted to buy a costly POE hub to power it. Added another $150 onto the total cost to use the unit.

The HCM511A video sampling rate creates cross talk on the audio circuit. The net effect is an audio beat loud enough to interfere with normal audio reception. Panasonic support is offshore, in Jamaca, they are completely worthless.

Unit dows not have enough resolution to identify unknown people. Wide angle lense is far to wide, things in the distance are lost in resolution. Close up on the bird's nest was OK, 8 inches.

You must use Internet Explorer and the active X plugin for the audio feed. Hey Panasonic!, not everyone uses Windows, nor should they be made to do so to use your products.

While the HCM511A can serve up to 30 users directly and has a number of useful confgiurations, I would look to another brand for a higher quality product.

I recently got this web cam to keep an eye on the dog in the back yard and provide another level of security for the back doors of our house. This webcam was surprisingly easy to set up and I bought a POE injector to keep wiring easy. I intend to buy a POE switch in the future and another webcam for the front door.

Several of the reviews on amazon were very helpful in selecting this model. It supports standard POE which makes multiple cameras much easier with a switch in the future as mentioned above. Several of the consumer level panasonic cameras and ones from other vendors use proprietary power over the Ethernet at weird power levels meaning that a dongle and wall wart would be required for each camera in my network closet.

Some hints on setup:
1) I set this up to run with a fantastic program called vitamin D. It allows you to only record motion in the field of view for the camera and then lets you easily scan the recorded images by type of object, time, date, etc. No hours of empty camera time and wasted hard drive space. Best part is this program is free for low-resolution and one camera. I will definitely upgrade to the paid for 50 bucks that lets you do 2 cameras at any resolution. There is also a commercial version for unlimited number of cameras. The panasonic camera has some recording features built in but this program blows them and the interface away.

2) Go buy a cheap ethernet cable crimp kit. Home depot has one for under 30 bucks or there are several on amazon. Then get some cat 5e cable and route it to wherever you need it to go. Splay out the wires per the color coding, crimp a connector on each end, plug them in, and you are good to go. This is super easy, and while not a requirement for the camera, it lets you do long cable runs cheaply.

3) If you are somewhat familiar with your router and can set up your router to pass a port thru to the camera you can access the thing securely from anywhere. It handles various log ins and password to keep things secure. If you have a domain name, and DNS service accessing the camera remotely at the same web address is easy and fantastic. Panasonic has a way you can do this through a web address provided by them if you don't have your own. You can then control the camera over the web page, use the speaker, and there is a microphone (audio uses an active x control so it is IE only, firefox and other browsers seem to be video only). My girlfriend will check on the dog from her office and thinks it is great.

I gave this 4 out of 5 stars for 2 reasons, one the camera is costly. It does a lot, but not 350 dollars a lot. For that price you could almost buy a decent used computer and several usb web cams. Speaking of, 25 to 30 dollar usb desk cams come in HD resolutions, why can't a 350 buck web cam? Most vendors out there are charging close 700+ for HD, which is outlandish. Logitech has a system that does HD which is more cost effective, but not quite what I was looking for. So I wish it came down in price and I wish it did HD, particularily once I get things setup to check on it from the TV.