This review is being written for epinions.com on 7/22/2008 for the Linksys WVC54GCA Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera.
Overall, this product meets my expectations for a low cost (< $100) Internet security camera. This is only suitable for well-lit areas as there is no night vision and poor low-light response (not suitable for a babycam to view while they are sleeping)
Internet Security Cameras in General - Overview
Compared to the first generation of standalone video cameras which typically hooked up to slow speed VCRs for video capture and playback for stores and homes, the Internet Camera is a device with more built-in intelligence. After setup, an Internet camera can run without any server such as a PC or external video capture device such as a DVR. The camera itself has a built-in web server that you can connect to with a web browser (Internet Explorer is required). Just type in the URL of the camera into IE on an IP-enabled device such as a PC that is accessible to the network, and a video display is available. Connectivity within your home (or from the Internet) is via your home broadband router.
Selected features of this camera:
- Wireless-G connectivity to your home broadband router. This greatly simplifies placement of the camera, with only the AC power cable needing to be considered.
- Wireless security support for WPA/WPA2 passphrase. This is generally considered the best wireless security available on a home router, although many Internet cameras only support WEP which is almost worthless due to it weak encryption. Encryption helps ensure that the wireless video/audio signal from the camera to your broadband router cannot be easily decoded by anyone in the area who intercepts it.
- Wired connectivity to your home broadband router - it's required for initial setup, and is optional after that. You can only use either wireless or wired connections, not both at the same time
- Motion detection - When "motion" is detected, then an alert with a short video (programmable length) or picture snapshot can be sent via email. "Motion" will be triggered not only by true motion but by changes in lighting. Even the Linksys manual suggests not using this feature if the camera is pointed outside due to this reason. Changes in internal lighting in a house will also trigger the motion detection function.
- Ability to record to a PC using included PC software (did not test this)
- Support for dynamic DNS (I use dynamic DNS support from my broadband router instead)
Overall impressions:
The first question most people ask is "How good is the picture quality"? The answer is "so-so". The quality is good enough for casual monitoring functions. Compare the resolution (640x480) to a typical camera on a mobile phone (mine is 1600x1200), and you will get an idea of the picture quality.
The camera is medium-sized, and is not suitable for mounting outdoors, nor for locations requiring a micro-cam. The camera is fixed focus and does not offer interchangeable lenses or pan/tilt/zoom capability. It does not offer night-vision capability and does not have the corresponding IR LED illuminators. Although touted as low-light capable, I find I need at least a 13 watt compact fluorescent bulb (or 60 watt incandescent) to get a good picture. The camera mount offers some flexibility to mount on a wall or shelf.
The other question most people ask is "How easy is it to set up"? For basic setup to view the camera on your home network, the setup is not too difficult. That's the best first step to attempt with this product, and investigate connectivity from the Internet as a separate project. If you have a friend who is networking savvy, you might consider doing this together to avoid some frustration as well as learn in the process.
Prework for Basic access from your local home network:
Before connecting this product using wireless, it's a good time to review your router's wireless setup and ensure you are using WPA2 encryption if it is available on your router. WEP encryption is not adequate. Encryption provides some protection from intrusion into your wireless network. The basics to ensure on your home router are: turn off SSID broadcast, change the SSID from its default value, use WPA2 encryption, and use MAC address filtering to restrict wireless clients from a known list.
Initial setup:
Place the camera near your router and connect using the included Ethernet cable to an available switch port on your router. Then, connect the power cord to the camera. If you connected the power cord first, disconnect and reconnect it. When the blue light on the camera stops flashing, the camera has obtained an IP address from the router. Next, run the Setup program on the CD on your PC. The program will find the camera on your network. Write down the MAC address of the camera and place that in the router's list of allowed wireless clients. You may have trouble if you leave the camera IP using DHCP. A static IP is preferred. The reason is that the router may reissue a new IP address after the DHCP lease expires (typically after 24 hours). The camera may lose connectivity and not regain it automatically unless manually power-cycled. It is better to assign a static (fixed) IP address to the camera. Check your router for the IP range you can use (probably OK to pick an IP out of the DHCP pool, or adjust the pool a bit smaller like I did and use addressed toward the end of the IP range for static IP's). Continue with the Setup utility to program the wireless settings: SSID, WPA2 encryption key.
After initial setup is complete, and wireless settings have been programmed using the Setup utility, disconnect the Ethernet cable and power cord from the camera. Reconnect the power cord and the camera should connect to the network via wireless.
Now, using the IP address of the camera (static IP assigned in the last step), open an Internet Explorer (not Firefox) window and type in the IP address on the URL line. The Linksys welcome page for the camera should appear and you can view the video. When connecting from IE for the first time, you will get a prompt to accept the Active-X control.
Additional Camera setup:
Be sure to change the administrative login on the camera and add a separate user login for only viewing video. These are especially important if you plan to allow Internet access to your camera later. Anyone who connects to your camera will see the welcome page, and the userids and passwords are your protection against unauthorized access.
Next step: Camera setup for motion detection with email
First of all, be aware the motion detection with email option is overly sensitive, and will respond to changes in lighting. To enable motion detection, connect to the camera using IE and select the motion detection page.
You can choose JPEG or MPEG-4 video clip format, and length of the video clip. You program the email addresses of interest to send the picture/video to, and your email server parameters (SMTP). If you do not know the SMTP parameters (server address and port number), check on your ISP's support pages.
Next step: Enabling for external Internet access.
Nothing on the camera needs to be changed for this step. The userids and passwords setup in the previous steps on the camera will help ensure that intruders cannot access the picture on your camera once you open up Internet access on your router.
On your router, you will need to enable "port forwarding". The concept is that the router, which normally blocks all unsolicited input from the Internet to your home network, will take incoming requests for a specific port received from the Internet, and forward those requests to a predetermined IP address on your network (your camera). Pick a port such as "9091" for the incoming port, and "80" for the translated port, with the translated IP equal to the static IP address of your camera.
You may have to turn off "uPNP" on your router if it is enabled which is "Universal Plug and Play" and opens up router ports automatically such as for Internet gaming. Most people don't need it enabled, and it is a potential security risk if infected software resides on your home network.
Enable dynamic DNS on your router (or on the camera itself, although I prefer enabling this on the router). Typically, dyndns.org is supported by home routers directly. Dynamic DNS allows your home router to register its external IP address (which typically is dynamic and may change periodically as directed by your ISP). When the router registers the dynamic IP address of the router with the Dynamic DNS service provider, the IP address is associated with a symbolic name of your choosing that does not change. This allows you to access your camera remotely by typing the URL and the special external port you selected in the previous step for router port forwarding. The URL for your camera would be the descriptive name followed by a colon and the port number you enabled for forwarding. For more information on this topic, consult your router's documentation.
Features I didn't test:
- Camera recording software to PC. This feature allows you to use your PC to view and record video to your PC's hard disk and manage multiple cameras. I chose to use the simple web interface exclusively
- Dynamic DNS from the camera (I enabled this from my home router instead)
Recommended:
