Home Monitoring Is Now Affordable
Written: Aug 11 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Easy Setup (with a little networking know how), Reasonably priced
Cons: WiFi support is sketchy, Reliance on ActiveX controls
The Bottom Line: Even with its faults, the WVC54GCA cam is well worth the price for an easy, affordable home monitoring solution.
|
|
|
| banditosway's Full Review: |
Home Monitoring used to be a costly venture not readily accessible by most consisting of bulky, ugly cameras and sophisticated closed applications. Linksys has now brought this convenience to the masses.
Linksys, now owned by Cisco, is an industry leader in Home and Small Office networking devices. So when they put out an IP based webcam I immediately took notice as it was backed by a credible company in the networking field. My only concern was that they weren't know for making webcams; that was usually left to the likes of Logitech.
However, for the number of years I've used Logitech's cameras, their shortfall was that they were always tethered to a computer and didn't have the ability to just place the camera anywhere you wanted. The Linksys WVC54GCA (the older sibling to their previous WVC54GC) not only gave you a network based camera with a built-in web server, but also included support for the 802.11 Wireless G standard which gives greater flexibility.
And with a price tag under $100 (in most online locations) its quite an affordable solution now.
SETUP
While Linksys is customer focussed and trying to allow their software based setup utility and simple instructions clear and easy enough for anyone to follow, I'd highly recommend that if you don't already have a basic "know how" of networking that you look for some assistance before you begin. Having over 13+ years as an IT professional, this wasn't a problem for me, but I can certainly see where some can get confused. The key is to be sure that your network is properly configured, you have adequate WiFi signal (read: VERY STRONG) in the location you want to cam and lock down the cam and your wifi network so prying eyes won't have a clear view into your home or office.
The Linksys setup utility does a good job at detecting the camera on the network and stepping you through configuring it for WiFi by giving you step-by-step instructions as it goes through the setup routine. My only gripe here is that this is a Windows only application. My primary computer at home is my Macbook Pro. Luckily for me I have Windows computers as well (along with VMWARE on my Mac) so I was able to step through using the utility.
Browser Experience
Once configured, accessing the camera's internal webserver is quite simple and available through most browsers. While Internet Explorer (on a Windows system) is the suggested option, it does work just fine via Firefox, Camino and Safari as well. The downside to using other browsers though is the lack of ActiveX control which gives you a bit more flexibility in controlling the camera through the browser. However, if you just want to view the live video stream then any browser works.
iPhone Support
While Linksys doesn't specifically say so, the iPhone can be used to view the video content as well through its Safari browser. I'll give you a fair warning though that you're going to want a good WiFi connection for it to work well, unless you really dial down the quality settings on the camera. Trying to use it over EDGE is just plain painful. I would assume that it could be better over the 3G network... IF you have a 3G iPhone and are in an area with good 3G coverage.
The downside with the iPhone is that it doesn't support the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) which is a standard to help streaming video be viewed on mobile devices. This doesn't get very much coverage in the Apple Support Forums. The upside to this is that if you do have a mobile phone that does support RTSP, then the WVC54GCA should work just fine for you.
WiFi Issues (?)
According to numerous postings on the Linksys Community forums, there seems to be some issues with WPA connectivity on this camera. While this isn't an "across the board" problem, there are quite a number of notable issues of the camera not being able to connect to WiFi networks. I have been having the same problem on my WPA2 network. Note that this isn't a signal strength issue or a router problem as 1) during setup the device was within 2 feet from my access point, 2) I can see the MAC address on the router and 3) I can connect to the camera when its hard-wired.
Suggestions from the Linksys forums included lowering the encryption levels to WEP or disabling it altogether as a test. While I haven't had the time to do so, I will when I get a chance, but for right now I have the cam in the location I want and I'm able to hard-wire it to my LAN via an ethernet cable (luckily my home is pre-wired with CAT5).
Complaints
My biggest complaint really is the reliance upon ActiveX controls. Since I don't typically use a Windows PC to view the cam I don't have access to control the camera as well with Firefox or Safari. This isn't crippling of course because I can still view the cam (which is the first priority) and I can administer the settings through the browser as well.
Along the same lines, the ability to record or schedule recordings can only be done from the proprietary windows based application. Again, as my primary computer is a Macbook Pro, I can't use this or have to make a special effort to boot up another computer just to do so.
Conclusion
Overall I really like this camera and would certainly buy another one. The WPA issues I'm sure will be addressed by a firmware upgrade at some point. The quality isn't perfect, but it certainly does give me a good view of the location I want to monitor from either across the home or while on the road.
Last Word
While Linksys does give you the ability to use TZO for dynamically accessing your camera from outside your home network (1 free year included), I found that you can easily setup a free account with DynDNS.org and do the same thing. This allows you to use a static domain name to access your dynamically assigned external facing IP address.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
banditosway
|
|
Member: Dave
Location: Temecula, CA
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
IT Professional born and raised in New York now transplanted in sunny Southern California.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.