I will say that getting it set up for basic stuff and "live" use is fairly straightforward. You could get a whole bunch of these and have a really wonderful security guard's office or something, with the pan and tilt capabilities. As a security camera, I think this does a great job.

But... what if you want to put photos onto a web site? Ah, now that's a little bit trickier. Okay, more than a little bit. The "FTP Recording" capabilities just aren't really there yet. The camera ignores the schedule I set for recording, uploads a couple images when it's first rebooted, and then that's about all. It frequently has trouble uploading the complete image file (I think it may be starting the upload before the image is saved internally?).

Like some other reviewers, I've gone back and forth with tech support multiple times. They're helpful if you have problems with the initial setup (the camera I'm working with had been moved from one LAN to another, and had to be hard-reset to pick up an IP address on the new LAN from its DHCP server). But problems with FTP Recording? No go. They did send me a new "special" firmware that hadn't been released to the public yet - and it didn't fix anything.

You can use this camera as a webcam, but as far as I can tell, it'll require the webserver (or some computer) to actually query the camera's built-in webserver and pull images off it. Doing this with a web server shouldn't be all that difficult, since it has to be on 24/7 anyway. Just pull "/live.jpg?&&&" at regular intervals from the camera, and save it with whatever timestamp you like. If that doesn't refresh, try querying /user_liveshot.html (I think that's the URL) first.

That said, the fact that the camera can be forced to work as a bit of a webcam doesn't excuse the fact that actually doing so is so painful. If you need photos for a web site, get something else unless you've got a really good reason to use this particular camera.

Recommended:
No