Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for baby cam + iPhone!!!, January 18, 2009
If you are like us and many new parents, you may have purchased an inside-the-house video baby monitor - such as the Summer. In this day in age, however, an even better solution is one that works both inside your house AND outside your house on your cell phone or at work!
This Sharx SCNC2607 is amazing and perfect for our baby cam. Great picture during the day and absolutely awesome images at night when there is no light in the baby's room! This was exactly what I was looking for when looking at the more expensive solutions such as Axis, Sanyo, etc (which were going to cost me over $500!). I was concerned that the Sharx would be of lower quality but I've been very pleasantly surprised...
Here are some benefits we've found by having the Sharx SCNC2607:
1. When Daddy is at work, I can keep a small window of the baby's room on my screen to see my little girl whenever I have a spare minute!
2. We have the camera setup as an icon on Mommy's iPhone so she can easily click on the camera and view the baby's crib. Whenever Mommy is away (and the Nanny, Grandparents, or Daddy is watching the baby) she can view into the room and see her little girl. Even inside the house we found that Mommy carries her iPhone around with her and its more convenient to have 1 consolidated device rather than also carrying around the Summer receiver.
3. We setup the Grandparents with an secure account to be able to look into the webcam and see their granddaughter anytime... We actually turned off the audio though to ensure we maintain some privacy in our conversations within the baby's room :)...
4. Screen size using the Sharx and the iPhone is 2x the Summer screen and has a much larger viewing angle.
So how hard is this to setup? I'd rate it on the moderately technical side. If you have any experience setting up a wireless network at home then it should be a breeze but you need to configure some things in your router. You'll take the camera out of the box, plug it directly into the router, run their little IP Finder software, then go into the camera and setup passwords, user accounts, etc. On the router (I have a Linksys), you'll need to go to the Applications & Gaming tab and setup Port Forwarding so you can securely tunnel into your home network to see the camera. Not difficult but I can see how someone with no experience may struggle a bit. Good news is that the camera comes with one of the best installation guide's I've ever seen that walks you through it all and even gives you steps to setup your own URL (through DDNS).
There is one thing you should keep in mind when going with a webcam instead of an inside-the-house monitor - the webcam is a `passive' device. Meaning you need to go to the webcam on your iPhone to see the camera. The inside-the-house versions that are `always on' enables us to put the baby to bed and listen to the monitor when she wakes. You can enable audio on the webcam but you still need to have it up on the iPhone to hear it (and likely Mommy is doing Facebook, etc). If I were to do this over again, I would simply buy a cheaper audio-only inside-the-house monitor to hear when the baby wakes up and use the Sharx for the video whenever I want to see the baby. (Or I could go old school and just listen for the baby to cry but what type of a techno-daddy would I be then :)?)
I'll finish with the customer service I received by the guys at SecurCam. One word - fantastic. I first purchased the SCNC2602W. However, I didn't realize that this camera didn't work with my iPhone or non-Internet Explorer browsers. I contacted the folks at SecurCam and they explained the issue and very quickly helped me out by selling me the 2607 even before the product was officially launched! They've been awesome at responding to my technical issues, have a great online support setup, and flat-out great products. In the day in age where everyone is cutting back and outsourcing their support to overseas - these guys set a new standard in personalized support. I'd not only purchase additional cameras from them, but if they went into business on other items I would not hesitate to purchase them also. Keep up the great work guys!!!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Choice, February 15, 2009
I recently purchased the SCNC2607 IP-Cam to use as a video server that I could access from within my home on my PC's and iPhones, as well as to access the video from anywhere outside my home LAN if I want.
Not requiring any special software to access this camera is the single most important item for me. If you want to be able to log into a camera from anywhere in the world, on any machine that has a connection to the internet and a web browser of some type, this is the one. There is also an included application called "Multi Live" which allows you to view up to 4 cams in one window.
The camera itself was pretty easy to set up, and the image quality is superb! No tricky setup decisions are necessary by the user to decide what type of streams are available to whoever logs into it from whatever platform. If you log into it on an iPhone through Safari, the iPhone negotiates with the camera server software and automatically appends the URL with the "/en/mjpgmain.asp" extension. If logged in from Internet Explorer, the basic URL automatically appends the "en/avmain.asp" extension. All you need to do is type the URL of the camera into your browser and the rest is taken care of automatically.
Safari on the iPhone will not process the audio stream, but this is not a problem with the camera, it is a limitation with Safari. I have read that Safari on a Mac computer will also not process the audio stream. I have tried various iPhone applications to process the audio stream, without success. But the designer of IP Vision by TTrix software has written me that an upcoming version will process audio. I have also tried this camera on a Sony PSP-3000 with the current firmware version (installed on 02-10-09) and current Flash update, but the device chokes up on memory limitations and can only process the jpeg still image. Some tablet PC's and/or WiFi portable media players like the Nokia N810 or Archos 605 might work, but I haven't tried them.
The default image quality settings don't need to be tweaked to lower quality settings unless your upload bandwidth gets maxed out. For one login to the camera (over the internet from work) I was able to use the maximum quality settings and didn't see or hear any problems. My connection at home is cable internet with about 128 Kilobyte upload and 5 Megabit download, so I was worried about upload speed. With 8 users logged on, there could be issues requiring some settings tweaks, but that's more than most people are probably going to be worried about. If you connect within your LAN then you don't need to be concerned with upload bandwidth, because the data isn't passing through your modem.
There is a color setting, moonlight setting, and night vision setting, but I choose to let the camera do what it thinks it needs to do and have left these controls in automatic. The night vision works even in absolute darkness, and the image is crisp and clean. There is a setting for motion detection, with variable parameters to offset alarms or recording from occurrences like ceiling fans or a bird flying past a window.
When viewing the camera on your browser, you have some easy control buttons available to take snapshots in either .bmp or .jpg formats. You can also record to your hard drive, in the .asf format. Recording can be stopped and started with the "Record" button, or started with the button and stopped by a maximum file size input that anyone logged in can specify. These picture and video controls can be run by anyone you authorize in either the admin account or any user accounts you set up.
The user accounts (an account created that is not the admin account) has no access to your settings for the camera, so it's a good one to send to Mom and Dad or your crazy aunt. When they get to the logon screen, if they choose "Enter" they can see what's on your camera and record what they see and/or hear. If they try to enter "Settings" then they are presented with the login username/ password box again. As long as they don't have your admin password, then you are safe from unauthorized changes to the camera settings.
For up to 8 concurrent logons, you don't need to create 8 separate guest user accounts. One will suffice. I have logged onto one guest account through a browser on my PC over the internet, through my iPhone on WiFi over the internet, and also through another browser on the same PC but using the LAN IP address. That's pretty cool to be able to log on over LAN or WAN while connected through the same router the camera is connecting to. Like if somebody chops up your internet cable connection with a ditch digger, you can still see the cam by using the LAN address.
The instruction manual supplied with the camera is very good. I only found one typo and it wasn't important. It was not translated three times from an original language using obscure clucking noises and hieroglyphic symbols. An email to tech support was answered promptly and with great attention to detail. The techies are REAL ENGINEERS, not some morons in monkey suits with a license to confuse and aggravate.
I mentioned before that the camera "itself" was easy to set up. That is true. What might be a bit challenging for some is the router configuration. I suggest while waiting for the camera to be delivered, brush up on your router's help files. Find the range of IP addresses your router is assigning to devices automatically, such as 192.168.1.25 through 192.168.1.125, because the IP address you choose to assign to the cam to make it a permanent host will be somewhere outside of that range. Also check to see if your router has the latest firmware. My Trendnet TEW-452BRP had a glitch with running DDNS updates, even if all the fields were input properly. This would have caused me great frustration had I not checked the website first.
If you want to access the cam from outside your LAN, then read up a little bit on DDNS. I'm using a free account from "no-ip.com" and there is a brief primer on using this service in the camera instruction manual. Check your router to see if it has an automatic function to update your current IP Address to a DDNS server. It doesn't have to, as your PC can do it for you automatically every time it boots with a free program you get after registering, but why not be redundant if you can? If you decide to set up DDNS so as to access the cam through WAN, then find out how to give the cam TCP and UDP privileges on a specified port number, typically using a function called "Virtual Server." Otherwise you would open "DMZ" or perhaps "Special AP" to give the cam connectivity rights.
Be warned that DMZ opens all ports, which might be dangerous. Special AP is for programs which require multiple connections that are blocked by NAT, so again that might be dangerous as well. Using Virtual Server only opens the ports necessary for functionality of this specific device, so it is the best way to punch that hole through the wall into the WWW. And remember, if you are restricting access to the router by use of MAC numbers, shut that off when first installing the cam or else you won't get it to connect. Later you can turn it back on.
None of this is rocket science, but if problems do occur, the Engineers at Sharx are competent and they are committed to not letting you fail. It even says so in the instruction manual!
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