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(More customer reviews)As I've read a lot of negative reviews on Foscam and Foscam-like cameras, I thought I should share.
My experience is with the genuine Foscam camera. There are some knock-offs; I have no experience with them. I have read that their firmware and software is different, so what I write here may not be applicable to them.
Genuine Foscam products apparently come in a distinctive package with cardboard packaging; that's what I got. The camera looks exactly like on the box, but the box is reversible and has a picture of a different camera on the 'other' side. Not to worry, it's just a case of efficient packaging.
It came with:
- the camera (a white one for me)
- a power adapter
- a 3' Cat5 network cable
- a wall mount (an unexpected bonus)
- a Wi-Fi antenna
- a CD-ROM and user manual
I'm going to address the three items that concerned me the most about the camera: quality, ease of installation, and noise level. I wanted to use it for a baby monitor, so noise was a concern for me. I got the white model to blend in with the baby monitor and other stuff.First off, the camera is NOT hard to install. Some people have complained that Foscams (or clones) are difficult to install and they can't figure it out. Simply put, setting up this camera is not any harder than setting up a wireless router, laptop, or any other wi-fi device you might come across.
So, if you have no idea how to set up and configure a wireless network - aside from clicking a "Connect Me" button - you are likely going to have problems. But if you have set up your wifi router, and have access to the wireless security settings, you are not going to have any problem.
You will likely need or want to plug the camera directly into your hub or router for the initial configuration. The camera defaults to automatic DHCP, so it will automatically acquire a network address from your router. I didn't try it with just plugging directly into a computer, so I don't know what will happen, but if your PC is set up the right way the camera will get an IP address from the PC.
You can then use the enclosed IP Tools software to find the camera on the network. The tool will allow you to do all of the configuration you want. I didn't use it, mostly because I saw no need to install yet more software on my already-clogged PC.
You can also use some way of discovering the network address - I went to the router DHCP status screen to find it. I then logged directly into the cameras web server. From there, you can obviously do everything you need. I personally set up everything, including the IP address and wifi settings, before I tried unplugging the network cable to test the wireless capability.
You will need access to your wifi security settings. All you really need to do is paste the security key into the camera's key field, so it can connect. If you want a static IP, you will obviously need to fill in all the relevant fields - the camera will barf if you try to set something incorrectly.One trick is that on the camera home page, there are two login buttons. The first one works for IE only. The second one, which is below the first, is for Firefox/Chrome.
I accidentally logged in to the IE screen with Firefox, and it came up, but wouldn't do anything. Which is to say, none of the buttons or controls would function. Using the right login button fixes the problem.
It does look like the Firefox/Chrome login does not have all of the features of the IE login screen, specifically with regards to multiple-camera simultaneous display. I only have the one camera, so this didn't concern me, but if I get another I might notice the lack. My IE is fubar and I wasn't able to try out that side of it, but I may do later on a different PC. Foscam might change this; they seem to have a history of making improvements to the firmware/software for these cameras.
The manual was clearly not written by a native English speaker, but I found it perfectly understandable. In all honesty I didn't hardly use it because the camera web interface is fairly well organized. Again, if you've set up a wireless device before, all of this will be familiar. The CD is a mini-CD.Second and third, the camera quality appears good. It is well made. It is also virtually silent when moving, which is nice to see (or *not* hear, as it were). I read something about it making a lot of noise, but that is not true of the one I got, so it may be another characteristic of the clones.
The image quality is, to my mind, fairly good. You can select 640x or 320x resolution, with corresponding changes in the update rate. I haven't measured the angle of view, but I'd judge it as medium-wide. With the pan/tilt, it matters a bit less anyway.
The update rate of the camera varies with resolution and the amount of movement/change in the frame. I imagine this is because the camera image compression works better on sequential frames that change very little, where scenes that change a lot require more horsepower to process. Update rate changed from about 1 second per update to about 5 seconds per update, depending on connection (wired/wireless) and what was going on. Not the best security camera in the world, maybe, but still pretty decent.
The camera does have auto-panning modes, where you can set it to pan horizontally or vertically automatically. In a lot of instances, this will work fine, but the update rate can get pretty slow. It's not suitable for Skype, or at least not in wireless mode at high resolution. Wired and low-res might cut it, but only barely.
Natural light and daylight image quality is just fine, and quite comparable to any other webcam on the market IMHO. At least comparable to my Logitech USB cam. There is a lot of barrel distortion but honestly, who cares? You can see what's going on, that's what matters.
Night vision is limited by the range of the infrared LEDs, but I found they were really quite bright and perfectly adequate for illuminating a mid-sized room. I'm not sure about a garage, but if you turn up the brightness a little I think it would more than likely work fine.
It does go black & white at night, but the level of detail is perfectly adequate for virtually any use, and realistically a little better than I was expecting. I'd take a guess and say the night vision on this camera is equal to or better than any other - that is just a guess, because I have no experience, but suffice to say this one works and works well at night.
Wireless range is decent enough for what I need, YMMV. I haven't seen it drop once yet, and it's been going 48 hours.The live video controls include pan and tilt - there is no zoom. You can also auto-pan and auto-tilt as well as flip and/or mirror the image. These would be useful for ceiling mount.
There's a few settings for image contrast, brightness and the like which I never needed to touch.
Missing on the Firefox/Chrome page is the multi-camera view and the multi-camera select options, so I didn't try those. Not sure why they're not there, but it likely has something to do with how the software handles FF/Ch vs. IE.
One minor quirk is that the camera will do a sort of self-test when started up, which involves automatically panning the head around. It looks like some kind of demonstration mode at first. It will stop moving after about 30 seconds. There is also a blinky LED that you can turn off.
I wasn't able to try out the motion detection because it's not available on the Firefox/Chrome web page. It may be available on the IE page, I'm not sure. I never installed IP Tools, but I assume it's available there as well. Email and FTP are linked to the motion detect.
I haven't tried the audio yet, so no comments on that. I may do just to see how it compares against my 'real' baby monitor.
I didn't use the wall mount, but I'm happy I got one anyway. I might need it sometime; baby doesn't stay baby forever.
The power adapter is one of those 'narrow' kinds that plugs in with the body sticking sideways, so if you want to plug it into a wall socket it won't block the other outlet.
Overall, I'd recommend this camera. It works fine, is quiet and unobtrusive, has decent image quality day and night and is not hard to set up and use. It seems unlikely you're going to get anything significantly better, at least at this price point. I'm glad I got it.
Additional: The FF/Chrome web page does seem to stop responding occasionally. This looks/works like an auto-logout function, but the browser gives no indication that it's no longer refreshing the image and simply gets stuck on the last image.
This may be a multi-user thing, as the camera has stayed live for 12-13 hours on many occasions.
This makes it difficult to tell if you're really seeing 'live' or not unless the image is always changing. It *may* make the camera unsuitable for 24/7 monitoring on static/semi-static scenes without periodic refreshing. depending on what is causing it.
I think this is a FF/Ch issue and not a problem with the camera connection itself, but admittedly I can't know for sure, nor can I be sure if this affects IE as well. Enabling the auto-pan would tell you if the browser is stuck, but that might not be convenient for all applications.
I also attempted to get the audio working, but there doesn't seem to be any sound from the camera via the web interface. Still haven't tried IP Tools to see if it's supported there. None of this bothers me particularly.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Wireless IP Camera with Pan & Tilt, Night Vision, 2 Way Audio, Apple Mac and Windows compatible. Color - White
Image Sensor?1/4" Color CMOS Sensor?Disaplay Resolution? 640 x 480 Pixels(300k Pixels)?Lens ? f: 3.6mm, F:2.4 (IR Lens)? Mini. Illumination?0.5Lux?Lens Type?Glass Lens?Viewing Angle? 67 Degree?Input?Built-in Microphone?Output?Built-in Speaker? Audio Compression?ADPCM?Image Compression:MJPEG; Image Frame Rate: 15fps(VGA),30fps(QVGA); Resolution: 640 x 480(VGA), 320 x 240(QVGA); Flip Mirror Images: 640 x 480(VGA), 320 x 240(QVGA); Flip Mirror Images: Vertical / Horizontal; Light Frequency?50Hz, 60Hz or Outdoor; Video Parameters: Brightness, Contrast;Ethernet: One 10/100Mbps RJ-45; Supported Protocol : HTTP,FTP,TCP/IP,UDP,SMTP,DHCP,PPPoE,DDNS,UPnP,GPRS; Wireless Standard: IEEE 802.11b/g; Data Rate: 802.11b: 11Mbps(Max.), 802.11g: 54Mbps(Max.); Wireless Security: WEP & WPA WPA2 Encryption; Pan/Tilt Angle: Horizontal:300° & Vertical: 120°; CPU: 2.0GHZ or above (suggested 3.0GHz); Memory Size: 256MB or above (suggested 1.0GHz); Display Card: 64M or above; Supported OS: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Browser: IE 6.0, IE7.0,Firefox or other standard browsers
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