Customer Reviews:
 Good value, works fine. But ZERO tech support. October 24, 2006
zunsuke (Silicon Valley)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've had this camera up and running for about ten days, now. I'm generally pretty satisfied with it, especially considering what it cost. In this review, I focus on ease-of-installation, picture quality, and versatility.
Ease of installation:
In a nutshell, this isn't too bad an install if you're pretty knowledgeable about working with home networks. For details, read below. Otherwise, skip to "Picture quality."
It's important to realize that this is a special breed of camera. Most webcams attach to a computer, and are set up directly from the computer. By contrast, this camera is self-contained, and connects to the computer (and Internet) via your router. This means that you first have to disable any wireless encryption/MAC filtering before the router and camera can even see each other. Then, you install the setup software from the included CD-ROM, confirm that the camera's made contact with the network, and enable encryption on both ends. (Hint: When the camera's green light stops flashing and goes steady-green, it's found the network.)
One obvious drawback of this method is that the camera may latch onto someone else's unencrypted network, especially if you're in an apartment with other signals right nearby. Another drawback is that if the installation doesn't all happen perfectly right out of the box, you don't know whether the problem is on the PC end, the router end, or the camera end. The poorly written documentation is of minimal help.
Conclusion: If you're comfortable doing wireless network stuff, you'll probably do okay getting set up. If you need more hand-holding, this might not be the camera for you.
Picture quality:
The quality is actually not too bad for what it is. At first, I was a little disappointed: the webcam at my dog's daycare blows this one out of the water. But then I found out that that webcam costs about 4x more than this one. So, I'm pretty satisifed that I've gotten what I've paid for.
The camera seems to deliver a maximum of 5 or 6 frames per second over the Internet. Even coast-to-coast, which was a pleasant surprise.
Colors are a little drab, and low-light performance isn't great, but the picture is quite clear, especially in good lighting.
Conclusion: It's hardly like watching a TV show, but the clarity and motion are good enough to make this a very decent webcam/surveillance camera.
Versatility
This camera is quite versatile, particularly because it's not tethered to a computer--anywhere you would put an alarm clock (with a power cord), you can place this camera. You can put it anywhere in your house, and use it as anything from a normal webcam, to a security camera. So far, I've used it to video-chat with my dad (who's on the opposite coast), I've turned it into a dog-cam on the days when our dog doesn't go to daycare, and I've monitored the maid service.
A neat extra is that there's a "Record" button that allows you one-touch "taping" of what you're watching to an MPEG4 file on your computer.
Another neat thing is that they include a "light bulb" adapter for the camera. This means that you can screw the camera into any socket that would normally take a light bulb.
Conclusion: Especially because of its standalone nature, this is a very versatile camera. I've been happy with it as a webcam and as a surveillance camera; I think it will be good as a baby monitor and to allow grandparents to see our little one (who will be here soon--that's the big reason for my getting this camera in the first place).
Pros:
Standalone, wireless unit can be placed anywhere
Does its own image processing, so doesn't drag your CPU way down
Pretty good picture quality/motion
Allows easy recording of what you're watching
Features/quality in line with price
Cons:
Badly written documentation
Miserable tech support: Waited a week for a callback on a basic question, only to be told "we don't have any information."
Wife forgot camera was live, and walked in front of it when she...uh...wished she hadn't. :-)
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