Customer Reviews

Swann SW211-DPE Digital Private Eye with SD Card

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I got the camera and installed it in 2 minutes. It definitely writes images to the SD card. The image is very clear. However, it saves one picture per second! That means it will fill up any card quickly. Even more, it saves all images to only one folder, and I found it limited to 10,000 images, which means 2 hours and 45 minutes only. Even worse, it doesn't save any timestamp on the pictures, so there's no way to tell when they were taken.
A good idea, but poorly implemented. If you could change the picture delay to 3 or 5 seconds, and include a timestamp, this would be a winner.

Bought the unit thinking it was a good idea which it is. Stand alone unit only needs power and saves all the images to an SD card.

The bad:
- only accepts up to 1 gb SD card. It takes too many pictures and will fill up the memory card in no time.
- battery only lasts 3-8 hours. So you would have to check on it often.
- Poor camera if object is in motion. Images are a blur, only very still items are in good quality.
- SD card sticks out of side. Anyone can see it, and supect it and also take the SD card!! should have been located in the back out of sight.
- price is a bit high for such a poor quality item. might as well invest in a real camera system.
- indoor only. plastic construction feels flimsy.

I have more than one cat and I needed to find out who was doing that in our house.

It's a little difficult to set it up for the "catch". The instructions say the infra-red sensor has a 15 foot sensitivity range so you have to be kind of close. The camera will see farther than that but, the sensor has a much wider field of sensitivity than the camera does a view. I got a lot of pictures of nothing as a result. The sensor was being triggered by things the camera couldn't see. A lot of pictures of nothing is kind of hard to go through. I mean one night I got well over 2000 pictures (a point on the plus side there) but fully 75% of them were empty.

At any rate, I caught the little guy and old grey got his nose rubbed in it that time.

Picture quality is acceptable. No problem with the SD Card. Had to rig up my own holding device as the bracket included is a little limiting to work with but, you know, for the price, it did the job.

When not needed to catch culprits, the camera also works as a web cam so...

Can't complain. I got what I needed.

This product works pretty well if you can get it to work. The weakest part of this product is the on and off mechanism. Even if the camera looks like it working with the LED blinking upon motion sensing; the camera mechanism may not be functioning as a result nothing gets recorded. From experience the best way is to unplug device everytime you turn off the switch. Replug in the device and wait 30 seconds and then turn on the switch. This seems to work so far.

The motion sensor is top notch and seems to be the gem of the product. The picture quality is acceptable so long the lighting is adequate.

[..]

There is no way to set the time and date so the images are saved with the wrong time and date. The image quality is poor. With a 9 volt battery connected and the unit switch set to OFF, the battery will be drained overnight. There is no way to tell if the camera has captured any images without removing the card and using a card reader or connecting the unit to a PC via the USB port. The software included on the mini-disk is all but useless. I'm returning this unit.

Item works as advertised. it's not real good in low light, so as a security camera it would not be good unless lights are on at all times. We use it as a pet monitor to see if our cats are being "naughty"

Picture quality good, download of pictures easy.

The picture quality from this motion activated camera is very poor and the overall quality is low which makes it not as cheap as it appears. However, it works as advertised.

This product works well. I had to set it up to see which one of my cats had a bladder infection. It's quiet and does't disturb the daily routine of pets. However, i wouldn't use batteries in it cuz it's eats through them within 12 hours. I use the plug in cord and it works really good. It didn't get hot when i used it. Great to spy on what your pets are doing while you're at work. I like it. It's a good investment.

I did not use the battery function but the a/c and it works great. Two problems are the angle was hard to get set and no method of putting a date on the pics, and SD card retains photos even though you delete them. You have no control over this as there is no setup on it.

Bought it, fired it up. Very excited to use it! But no way will it work on Macintosh. Unable to find any images on SD card even with data recovery software. Don't get sucked in Macintosh users!!! The product info does not tell you it won't work on Macintosh. You have to buy it like I did and then call customer support. No sympathy from them..., You are stuck! You would think it should work? All digital cameras work famously with Macs. Well, I found one that doesn't!!!!