Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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195 of 211 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Camera for $100 don't be misled by others on here., February 28, 2008
I bought this camera 2 weeks ago and put it above my front door looking out onto my walkway and street and it works great. It's 802.11 G/B so it scales back if you have only a B access point. It takes good 640/480 up to 30 frames per second video. It's got a couple of low light enhancements you can turn on which work pretty well. DONT be disappointed if it can't see in the dark it's NOT a night vision camera. However... I don't yet know if it can see IR. I guess I need to get out a remote and see what happens.
So a few people posting reviews have said it's not easy to setup. Not True!! I guess if you don't know anything about home networking, port forwarding, or WIFI then yeah of course it's going to be hard to setup. But don't come bashing the product just because you lack the skills to set it up correctly. Now I will admit I'm a IT professional and make a living doing so but, anyone with basic networking skills should be able to get this camera working in 10 minutes. Now... That doesn't include the time to tweak all the settings as it will take several days and some time to get everything just how you want it.
I got an iPhone that I use all the time to watch streaming video. In fact I used the iPhone to setup the camera using it as my hand held display so I could see what the camera was seeing.
One thing I will mention that I'm not really fond of is the motion detection system. If you turn it on, it requires you to choose either FTP or Email for the alerts. The problem is that even with the sensitivity really low it still triggers and you get like 10 million emails. Now that's not entirely the blame of the camera cause every time a cloud goes over my house the sidewalk changes because of the lighting and causes the camera to trigger a motion detection event. But if you were using the camera inside your house it would most likely function much better.
The camera comes with a CD that has some recording software that works ok. I've had it crash more than once in the past two weeks but it seems to happen when you have the motion detection enabled to send videos via Email. I switched this feature to JPEG's instead of motion and the application hasn't crashed since.
The camera does do audio but only when watching the playback on the software or using IE 6.0 or greater to watch the live video directly from the camera. I.E. you can't hear the sound with Firefox or Safari. However, you can adjust all the settings and get it going without IE so if you're a Mac person like myself you will need to have access to a PC at some point especially since the recording software, motion detection, and live video viewing with sound portion of the camera uses a Active X control that only works in IE.
All in all this Camera is an Awesome camera for $107. It did everything I wanted and more and it works well. I ended up buying 2 more of them since I was so pleased with the first one.
Just make sure before you buy this that you meet the following requirements.
A. Know what your doing when it comes to networking or you will be disappointed as with any network device it takes a level of skill to set it up.
B. Make sure you have access to a PC to setup all the things that require and Active X control and IE 6.0 or greater
C. Don't expect the device to see in the dark with great precission
D. Remember that you only paid $107 for something that does almost as much some of the other expensive stationary network cameras on the market.
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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent camera, terrible software., June 14, 2008
We purchased this camera for security reasons.
The good:
The network setup was fairly straightforward, I did one camera via the included Linksys software and one by accessing the cameras firmware directly. The camera's have fixed-focus, so if you're taking pictures through a window, it's nice to know that the camera won't focus on glare in the window instead of the area of interest. The camera's mount is adjustable and has screw mount points so you can fasten it to where you need. The picture quality is OK, we only expected basic video quality, not high-def, that would take too much storage capability for video capture. The motion capture function for video is a nice addition, though there are some issues with that.
The software allows you to monitor multiple feeds, and via the camera's firmware, allows you to set up motion capture, and FTP or email setup so that you can view your video from anywhere you have internet access. I haven't set up streaming video yet...
All in all an "OK" setup, but there are issues...
The bad:
The camera's mount only allows the camera to be mounted vertically on the stand; we have one camera mounted sideways and the software does not allow you to rotate the picture. All feed is sideways from the camera.
The software is clunky and slow and doesn't do what it is supposed to as far as storing images go. Awful. The interface doesn't allow you to select multiple files and delete video you don't need. You have to select and view each file and then delete it. If you've let the camera run for a few days, this can be easily over a few hundred video files and it would take forever to get rid of them. The .sef file format is not viewable by any other software, so you can't just open them in windows and view them in a different app that might be better.
Stored video doesn't go where it's supposed to. We have the cameras set to MPEG motion capture. There are plenty of false captures (nothing we could see moving) and the sensitivity adjustment doesn't seem to be working very well. The videos for camera #1 are stored just fine and can be viewed. The videos for camera #2 show up like they've been stored, but you can't view them! We set camera #2 up to feed to an online FTP and that seemed to work ok and can retrieve the files that way. We set #1 up to send video, but it doesn't send video to the FTP like #2, it sends still photos! All we want is to watch and store video to and from the same place.
Overall:
The camera is adequate for what we want, it does the job. If the software interface was better, we'd have given this product a much better rating, but the software is terrible. I'll probably spend many more hours trying to get it to do what it's supposed to, store the files in the same directory accessible by the viewer or storage online. If it gets sorted, I'll post the fix here. Otherwise, does anyone know of another app that works with these cameras?
EDIT: To everyone that has the camera drop out after XX hours: You need to set a fixed IP to the device in your router! Wireless routers give each device that connects a "certificate" that allows it to stay connected to the wireless network. These certificates have an expiration time, and the router may assign a new IP to the device after that time period. If that happens: no IP, no camera, no video! You'll have to figure out how to do that yourself, there are too many different routers and setups out there for me to explain it here. Try your user manual, online support for your manufacturer, or even a Google search for info.
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53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a great camera - even on an all Mac System, December 9, 2008
I bought this having had a little experience setting up a Panasonic webcam. With that bit of knowledge, I was able to set this up in 10-15 minutes. I have use OS X and an Airport Extreme router. To set up this camera with a Mac - you will not be able to use the software disc that comes with the camera (unless you have Windows on you system - I have too much pride for that).
The basic setup is to plug in the camera to the router with the Cat 5 cable. Now the trick is to find out what address the router gave to the camera. Look on the back of the camera to find the MAC address. Now open Airport Utility>Manual Setup>Advanced>Logging &SNMP>Logs&Statistics>DHCP Clients. Now you see a list of IP addresses and MAC addresses. Look for the Mac address that matches the sticker on the back of your camera. That is the IP address for your camera.
Now you type 'http://' followed by the IP address of your camera into your browser. You will find the camera and use 'admin' for both the user name and password. Now you can set it up as you would like. I set up my camera wireless, made it a static IP address, and gave it a unique port, gave it a new new name and password. Then I set up Port forwarding on my router (this is only if you want to be able to see it from the internet & requires more set up). I unplugged it and disconnected the ethernet athen plugged it into the power and it works great wirelessly.
The video is what I would expect from a 640 resolution camera. There is a reason this camera is inexpensive - but it suits my home monitoring needs just fine.
Like the Panasonic, I do not get sound using a Mac - I think you have to have ActiveX on Internet Explorer - but I didnt need sound. It would be nice for those who do to be able to get it with out having to use Microsoft products.
The mount for this camera is better than what both of the Panasonic units I have.
This camera doesnt have a buffer like the panasonic. But the memory in the panasonic is so small it is almost useless.
This camera overall is a great value -under $100 for a wifi camera? that is a bargain.
You do need a little technical knowledge or the desire to try to get any of these cameras set up. These thing are still not Plug n Play - but if you can tinker with the settings of your computer a little, you can set this up. From what I've read, the software that come with these for the Windows side does not always work - and you still need to tinker with the settings. My wife and mother could never figure out how to set this up. They can do email, facebook, etc, but dont go beyond that. If that is you - don't buy this camera, or plan on having someone help you.
Good Luck.
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