Customer Reviews

Panasonic BL-C121A Wireless Network Camera

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After doing a lot of research on Amazon I took a chance to add this camera to my existing home CCTV system. I use 4 logitech 9000 USB cameras. Two to monitor outside, and two to monitor the second floor of my home. I wanted to monitor the first floor, thereby completing my CCTV project. I travel a lot and like to keep an eye on my home from afar. I run everything on an iMac, running "Security Spy". Security Spy supports this camera. My goal was to connect it to my wireless network, and view the camera via Security Spy, and the camera's built in webserver, if the iMac went down while I was traveling (which has happened in the past).

At first I had problems but with a bit of patience I figured it out. The first thing I had to do was to give the camera a static ip address as my airport extreme would want to change the camera's IP address everytime it rebooted, which caused me a hour of grief. Once the camera had a fixed IP my airport extreme router settled down and "accepted" the camera.

The second thing I had to do was to "disable" the Plug N Play feature in the setup menu of the camera. That caused me another hour of wasted time, as the UPnP feature caused havoc with the stability of my wireless network and prevented me from seeing the camera via the internet. Once the UPnP was disabled in the camera my wireless network was rock solid. I was able to view the camera via the web, as well as on my iphone. The camera has proven to be a great addition. The picture quality is great. It is very well made. To me, it was money well spent.

I only wish the documentation was written better, as I really felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants. So detailed below is a brief overview to help other Mac users as the setup was not in the instructions, nor are they obvious.

For Mac users that have an Airport Extreme router, it helps to setup "Port Mapping" to ensure you can see the camera on the web. Go into "Utilities" in the Applications Menu, then select Airport Utility and wait for the application to open.

Once you see your Airport Extreme in the viewing pane, select "Advanced" followed by "Port Mapping". Then hit the "+" and select "Personal Web Sharing" from the drop down menu. Type in the forwarding port you want to use. Example port "80". Enter this value in the Public TCP Port field, and then enter it in the "Private TCP Port" field.

Then in the Private IP address field enter the camera's IP address. Finally give the Port Mapping configuration and name....eg. "KITCHEN_CAMERA". Hit continue and wait for the airport extreme to reboot. Once this is done the router is configured.

Power up the camera close to the router (making sure it is in range) and the blinking light on the camera should go green, indicating you have a connection established. Don't forget to turn off the UPnP in the SETUP menu of the camera as I mentioned earlier. If the camera does not work, don't worry. You are 95% complete. Just back track your steps as you may have missed something. Good luck to all.

Enjoy the camera it is a great little device. I hope this review and my mac configuration helps others.

I needed a "nanny-cam" network to monitor the whole house. I installed FOUR Panasonic IP cameras (one BLC-1A and three BLC-121). All function exceptionally well. I am able to access any single output or a composite of all four easily, even from an iPhone.
The wireless range and reliability of the BLC-121 was disappointing, but when hooked up in wired mode, work flawlessly. Setup with a Mac was difficult (there are plenty of "how-to's" on a google search that made it less painful). Sound for the BLC-121 on a mac is nonexistent.
Very happy with the video clarity and reliability of all four cameras in wired mode.

Bought this camera to keep an eye on my front yard. I have it facing the window looking outside. Initial setup was easy, although had to play around with it to fine tune the settings. Images are decent at the higher resolution of 640X480. Less than this, images are comparable to that taken by a cell phone. Have it setup to FTP images to my computer. Wireless range is good. Please note that the camera does not perform well in low light or night time conditions. Camera does have a night view feature which does improve the low light condition somewhat, but the image is grainy. Overall this is a decent camera for the price.

This is a decent camera given its low price. You should have no problem working with it if you are on a PC. However, there exists virtually no support for non-PC users. If you are not on a PC, e.g., mac or linux, the installation DVD does not work for you and you have to manually connect and set up the camera using your system utilities. If you understand how to set up local fixed IP and port forwarding, this is just some work for one time. But the real unsolvable issue is that you have to use IE to access the audio from the mic on the camera, because the program on the camera is written in ActiveX, which is proprietary for IE. You can still access the video stream with other web browsers, but forget about the audio. Unless Panasonic publishes alternative program for non-PC/non-IE users, you might want to hold up the purchase.

Received this camera today and installed easily. I could view it perfectly on my computer through my wireless network. The only problem I had was configuring my router as I am a ATT uVerse customer and the configuring was a little different due to their firewall settings. I had to go in and create a custom firewall setting for the camera network setting then I could view the viewnetcam website for my camera. We love this so much we just purchased a second camera for a different room to keep an eye on our pets.

Great camera! Installation of the software was however more tedious than I anticipated. My husband spent close to two hours on the phone with technical support. They were, however, VERY helpful and stayed with him on the phone until installation was complete. We also go the wireless camera that tilts. Can use both cameras simultaneously and access both images at the same time. Great if you have kids and want to watch them when you are away.

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This camera is perfect for a home or small business. I recently replaced two TrendNet WiFi cameras with these Panasonic units. The image quality is excellent, though there is no infrared night vision. But that's a good thing if you're like me and have them mounted inside behind glass. iR night vision capable cameras tend to have the iR lights reflect off the glass at night causing your image to be unviewable. Almost like holding a flashlight in front of a mirror (if that makes sense). So if you're mounting these at your home or business, as long as you have a good motion light outside your home, that's all the light you'll need.

The clarity and auto focus on these cameras are excellent though colors may appear slightly washed out. But we're not looking for HD quality here. The TrendNet cameras you had to manually focus by turning the the lens. These have no such focus mechanism.

1. I love that these don't have the annoying external antennas on them, the wifi antenna is built in. Cameras with the WiFi antennas tended to be a pain to mount because you had to take that antenna into consideration.
2. I love the mounting bracket. The mounting bracket was well thought out allowing you to mount it sideways, upside down, or right side up. In other words, the base you see in the photo, can be rotated any direction. Then your camera can rotate 360 degrees as well. I found the base to be well built. My TrendNet and Dlink camera swivel mounts broke after rotating them a few times, and they were only rotated a few times because you couldn't tighten them into position without breaking that too.
3. These have a microphone but I've never used that function.
4. They are compatible with the Synology IP Cam software, as well as NetCamWatcher

They're fairly small/compact. Making mounting them near a window with blinds/shades flawless since they're square but boxy. My TrendNet cam has a weird shape which caused my blinds/window shades to stick out a bit. I've uploaded a small video to show the picture quality. But it's possible that Amazon may have adjusted the video/image so the quality you see might not be the same quality I see. Also I wasn't able to find anything moving when I took the video.

What I don't like: Not much that I don't like. The software as a bit strange when trying to get it setup wirelessly. But I think that's because I'm an Information Technology professional. We're used to doing things the hard way (or the technical way), not by using software that attempts to make it easy. So though I found the software tricky at first (probably because I tried to skip the instructions) I think a non-technical user would find it quite simple.

I'd purchase this item again. In fact I already did.

Ok, I'm not a technie and was worried about setting this up. Nothing is more frustrating then trying to get stuff to communicate, laptops, modems, routers, iPads, Wiis, just not my thing. The other reviews worried me about the lenght of time and having to call customer support etc... but I really want to help secure my home so I thought I'd try. Well I was done within 10 minutes and the camera works great. I went back to buy a few more and noticed that the price increased $15 since I ordered 2 weeks ago (oh well), but I wanted to just try one first. I did order more because I'm so happy with the product.

You have to wire the camera to set it up initially so you do need a CAT5 cable (not included). I followed the instructions and everything happened just like the instructions said. I have DHCP so I didn't need to know any IP addresses. You do need to know your wireless security key and wireless network name. The wired test worked just fine, I clicked the address it gave me and there was my mug looking into the camera. The true test was unplugging the CAT5 and seeing if it really did work wirelessly and yes it did! The microphone seems fairly sensitive, it picks up general white noise, I just turned the volume down. For some reason, the camera gets really warm, but the instructions said this is normal.

The web page allows for additional settings and it tiles the view for each camera. I'm hoping setting the next camera will be just as easy with no conflict problems. I'm probably borrowing trouble, but again, not my forte, I hate programming devices. So in conclusion, I found this to be quick, easy and works just as I had hoped. There is something very satisfying about being able to check on your house at any time. I just bring up the site on my iPad anytime - anywhere!

It can be tricky to setup, especially if you have a wireless router and trying to get access via cell phone. Cell phone doesn't get audio. Still, I think it's the best in the price range.

Wow. I'm very impressed. All kinds of things about this camera are nice surprises. Looks and feels well made, image is sharp and clear, web page configuration allows many options like capturing so many frames for so many seconds after motion is detected, and on and on. Particularly neat: there are two terminal pairs available on the camera. One of these pairs, you can connect to a switch (like a door opening detector switch say) and trigger the camera to grab pictures whenever it activates. The other pair is itself a switch you can connect to other things, and control remotely through the web. But like many other details, you don't have to fool with these unless you want.

I didn't even unwrap the CD, didn't install any software. I figured the camera would have an IP address of 192.168.1.??? and that it would probably be near one end or the other of the 0-255 range, so I tried typing IP numbers into my web browser, and on 253 I found it. It wanted my name and a password, and then it gave me the web page interface, which was clean and clear and simple. Some of the wording was in funny English-as-a-second-language but it was easy to guess what they meant.

By the way, I used a Mac for all of this, which did not seem like any problem in the slightest. I'd guess any computer with a web browser would be fine.