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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Has a few issues to work out, October 7, 2006
This review is from: Toshiba IK-WB15A IP Security Pan/Tilt/Zoom Camera (Electronics)
Overall this camera rates middle of the road with me. Picture quality is great but night time motion recording is poor. The camera seems to lack some common sense functions that the company said they're aware of. First of all the camera is promoted as an indoor/outdoor camera. Since the camera has a CCD image sensor it is very suseptable to damage from sunlight, however the camera lacks the ability to schedule automatic setting changes. For example during the night the slow shutter and max gain control provide excellant images (motion however is blurred or nonrecordable) but during the day these settings may damage the sensor if exposed to direct sunlight. No timer exsists to automatically change these settings or change direction of the camera to prevent sunlight damage. The second issue involves recorded files, since the motion sensor is active all the time with no time out option, alarm recordings are in several small file entries. I've seen up to 5 seperate files recorded for a single event with some of those files containing just one image. At the end of the day you can have over one hundred alarm recordings for just 20-30 events. The company has said over the phone they're aware of these issues but hasn't indicated if they will correct them. Company did indicate that the camera will interface with third party software such as Active Webcam. Since installing the third party software the recording issues are no longer a problem. Actually caught a thief the other night when the motion lights came on and he was face first in front of the camera. The Police were able to make out the image.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Camera works with Linux, August 2, 2007
This review is from: Toshiba IK-WB15A IP Security Pan/Tilt/Zoom Camera (Electronics)
I posted extensive comments before for this camera complete with URLs referencing documentation and helpful web sites, but Amazon saw fit not to allow my comments to be included on the product page.
This camera does work with Linux. For instance, you can use the open source "motion" program to develop it into a full-fledged security system. One net personality also wrote a simple javascript-enabled web page for Firefox which allows continual viewing of images from this camera. The image format is "motion jpeg" (mjpeg).
There are several other open source programs I've not had a chance to evaluate for this camera, but I would be surprised if they didn't work, since all of these net cams seem to use mjpeg.
On the whole I like this camera, have in fact bought 2 more, and am considering buying more.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Blur, June 7, 2008
This review is from: Toshiba IK-WB15A IP Security Pan/Tilt/Zoom Camera (Electronics)
I have the IK-WB15A camera, hardwired with a POE network connection. I got this camera with plans to record the cars passing by my place 24/7s. I figured with the high resolution that this camera has, it should take great pictures, but while it takes nice large images, this images are not sharp. Spoke with Toshiba's tech support and we both looked at the camera online and made adjustments. But it came down to the fact that the camera cannot take good clear images of moving vehicles or people even during the day time, they are just a blur. My Panasonic cameras BB-HCM531A does a far better job with just a 640 X 480 image then the Toshiba with it 1280 X 960 image can.
Motion detection options are poor and limited.
Audio I/O connection cannot be used if you use the sun shield, the jacks on on the side of the camera and not protected from the weather.
PTZ is slow to move.
Limited Alarm settings.
White Balance is also not great, I have very blue skies and brown grass.
Camera is large about a 5 x 5 x 5 box.
Low light level images: dark unless you really SLOW down the shutter.
No day/Night or auto setting of the slow shutter speed. One setting for all light levels. If you set it slow for night, it will be slow for day time too.
Low light level listed as being very low, but that is only if you take in to account that it also takes 4 seconds per frame. I would say more like 4 lux min.
Firmware needs to be written better IMHO.
Okay, the now the good things about this camera:
Optical zoom is GOOD, about a 2.6X zoom, no digital zoom!
Image size is GOOD, 1280 X 960
Tech Support, fast to answer, and tried to help and honest about the limits of this product.
Has a very nice low noise image at night with super slow shutter speed (4 seconds)
Now I use it for a weather camera, since that is about all it is good for. See for yourself, live, www.mywxbox.com (Bridgeland station).
For a security camera, this is NOT a great camera to go with due to blurry images. IMHO My Panasonic BB-HCM531A, day and night time images are better for security. Smaller too!
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