Customer Reviews

Toshiba IK-WB15A IP Security Pan/Tilt/Zoom Camera

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

 

 

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.

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.

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!

I have several of these cameras. I use them with POE, connected to the SecuritySpy software, which knows just what to do with them. It all Just Works. The image quality is better than what I need; the POE capability was critical for me. They've been installed outdoors for 14 months and have endured sun, rain, wind, and more sun (we don't get snow here). I don't use or want any of the standalone features like the webserver inside the camera or the SD card at the camera. I use it as a network camera and those functions are performed elsewhere on the network.

I have them set up on their own NAT network so that they aren't accessible from the public internet; the SecuritySpy software handles the interface and firewall so that I can look at them from afar and you can't. They work just fine with a standard POE supply, but I connected them to a PowerDsine 8012 midspan just in case the PTZ motors would benefit from some extra watts. I don't think it made any difference.

I've seen some reviews here that lament this camera not having this or that feature. I'm glad it doesn't, because those features would probably consume extra power from the somewhat-limited POE supply.

This camera is absolutely perfect for my needs, and so far it's been reliable.

Its a good camera for the money. Records motion well and has a good resolution. I was not impressed that the SD card has a 1GB limit and Toshiba has not released any new firmware to fix this. Also, the camera's speed is faster than other in the same price range, but still produces blurry images in dark lighting.

First, try to find a cam that works over POE and you can move for under 600 dollars. Toshiba nailed it.

I love the auto patrol mode, does a great job of uploading pics to my webservers for the world to see.

Haven't messed with the alarm recording but if i did, i would use active webcam to caputure and alert me, use it on most of my cam setups.

www.springvalleyca.com www.hubertnc.com and you can see cam in action.

This camera arrived when promised and in working order. I am using a total of 9 of these cameras for video security at our offices, although 1 camera was dead on arrival. The camera has motion detection that initiates an FTP file transfer to our server - this is an indispensible feature for video security. Power over Ethernet makes the hardware installation very easy. Note I've found that only 2 of these cameras can be connected to Netgear FS108P 8-PORT POE Switch simultaneously.

Network configuration is straightforward if you enable automatic DNS. The camera settings are confusing and sometimes daunting. It needs a good context sensitive help file. This being said, the hardware itself is excellent.

Camera is actually a nice package and does exactly what I bought it for. Comes with a nice feature set. It can act as an intervalometer and ftp or email snapshots. Motion trigger. Good image for what it is. The problem I have is that the viewer requires the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer and ActiveX controls. YOu can't view images using Firefox or Netscape or Safari. IE 6 or later, only. Stupid. Probably to support the feature where you can click anywhere in the image and the camera will center the image there. Not worth it. I'll find another product and this one will go on ebay.

I read the reviews - was very pleased with this thing's performance and ordered it. It's a much BIGGER camera than it's competitors in the same performance, made by Panasonic. Not sure why - but the same creature under Panasonic is about 1/3 smaller, and performs just as well!

The picture quality is excellent, the features for controlling and managing the picture are great. The setup is fairly easy. (those are the good things)

The BAD:

* It is not well supported by my Synology Surveillance server. It's a bear to setup, and I never really got it working reliably.

* It does NOT have an interface that works with MAC computers, only PCs!

* It's limited video streaming options really limit what you can view the item on.

* The outdoor install down-pipe does not come with insulation stuffing or a sealant tape! (Can you believe, I spent the same money on a Panasonic, it came with a nice spongy thing to wrap the in-coming wires going into the pipe, and some self-sealing tape to close up the pipe to make it waterproof!) The equity with the Panasonic models is really impressive. I went with the BB-HCM531a.)

One more thing - if you rely on the camera to capture motion, it's going to store JPEGs rather than AVI content. The server turns these into AVI but the camera just hits you with a deluge of JPGs. The Toshiba did make JPG images, the panasonic makes images of a proprietary format (*.PNC) which you have to use their viewer to look at - kind of a pain, but not a killer for me - I manage the input as AVI anyway thru the server).

Overall a good performer, but not the right one for me.

This camera Model (IK-WB15A) does not have wireless like the vendor claims. The previous model to this the (IK-WB11A) which is now no longer made, had wireless.

All in all not bad cameras, I have both, the WB11a and WB15a. Hunt around with the model number for the best deals.