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123 of 126 people found the following review helpful.
Great deal, but you've gotta work for it
By Pat Denoli
I'm usually pretty good with bad English translations in my instruction manuals, but this product is pretty rough. You often can't tell if the manual is telling you that something needs to be done in order to make something happen, that it shouldn't be done if you want it to happen... or if you need to make the second thing happen (some other way) in order for the first thing to be taken care of. Use of negatives and double-negatives is a challenge, too. If you are familiar with the configuration of network gear, try to forget what you know. It doesn't work *exactly* the same with this camera. You're better off as a novice, I think.Since it burned 15 hours of my time, here's a possible help for some people about to return their camera because "wireless isn't working". This is for people who manually assign IPs, or who don't understand why the camera isn't finding any wireless networks. Understand that the camera has to be set it up in very specific stages. You can't make all your changes at once. Also, you must use the proprietary software to connect to the camera over Ethernet the first time. Don't use other software. Make sure you set your router for dynamic IP allocation. Next, you reboot through software. Next you power cycle. Log into the camera using IE. It says you can use other browsers, but don't. NOW set up the wireless properties. Save them, remove the ethernet cable. Reboot through software and then power cycle (yes, that's two boots). Log in again. NOW change the IP assignment from dynamic to manual. Save and reboot through software and then power cycle. You won't find these instructions in the manual. I had to stumble upon it and I've repeated the process with minor variations to be sure - nothing else works. Good grief!!!!!!! I was about to pack these things up and ship them back. Looks like they work fine if you know the right dance. I'm using 128 bit WEP. If you're using something else - good luck to you.
77 of 78 people found the following review helpful.
Love it!
By My Opinion
I was a little concerned after reading all of the posts complainingabout how hard their experiences were in setting up this camera.Aside from that, the ratings were good, the price was right, and sinceI have 20 years IT experience and am a glutton for punishment, Iordered one. Actually I need at least three, but I wanted to buy oneas a test, and if it passed, I'd buy the additional two cameras.I ordered this camera and several days later it was already in mymailbox. I unpacked it, and was going to put off configuring it untilChristmas day, when I would have had much of the day to play with it.Being the workaholic that I am, I decided to go ahead and try andconfigure it within minutes of deciding I wasn't going to do it. Igot out the instruction book and started going through the steps, oneby one. The grammar kind of bothered me, you can tell Englishwasn't a native language for the technical document writer. I'm notgoing to lie, you're going to need a bit of technical experience toget this camera connected, but it's not the camera's fault. With allthe security that's around nowadays, along with all the possible setupscenarios, it's likely never going to be a plug and play scenario toget an IP camera working. I'll bottom line you though - it was worthit. I love this thing!My first bit of advice is to take the instruction book that's insidethe box, and put it directly into your trash can. Seriously. Thatbook is flawed and you're going to need the Hubble Telescope to readthe small print to begin with. Follow the manual on the CD that's inthe box. There are guides on the CD. One is a User Manual PDF and theother is a quick guide. Follow the User Manual for it's a bit moredetailed. Now let me describe my equipment and the steps I took toget this camera configured. My equipment: Linksys Wireless Router, PCrunning Windows XP Pro SP3, Cable Mode for Internet connection.If you want this thing to email you photos when the motion sensor istripped (or to connect to it via the Internet, which is why you'relooking at an IP camera to begin with), then you're going to need anInternet connection. You'll need at least a Cable modem. I can'timagine how slow it will be if you have DSL and you're trying toconnect to this camera over the Internet. So, I've got a Cable modem,Linksys wireless router, and a NON SSL POP email account. YOU CANNOTUSE GMAIL WITH THE CURRENT FIRMWARE WITH THIS CAMERA. Gmail requiresSSL and the SMTP client on this camera as of today is not written forSSL, so save yourself some time in trying to do it anyway. Unless youuse STunnel from [...], it's just not going to happen. Since Ihave several email accounts, I simply chose one that I knew didn'trequire SSL (it's a hosted account I have with Rochen, with gives youthe option to use their non SSL SMTP port 1025 which will work with this camera, or to use the more common Secure SMTP like that of Gmail which won't work with this camera.)Quick steps of what I did:Step 1: Screw the antenna into the camera. Plug the network cable intothe camera and then into an available port on your wireless router.Plug the power cable into the wall and then into the camera.Step 2: Now on your computer, which is also running through yourrouter, run the IP Camera tool from the CD, but first make sure youexit any web browsers you may have open. You may have to reboot yourcomputer after the IP Camera Tool installation.Step 3: You should be reading through the User Manual at this point,as there are many possibilities for your current setup. You shouldhave also already thrown the printed manual into your trash can whereit rightfully belongs. Run the IP Cameral Tool icon from the desktopif you had to reboot your computer. Your camera should show up inthat list as anonymous, followed by[...] Personally, I'm running DHCP soan IP was already assigned to the camera when it booted. If youdouble click on the IP address of the camera in the IP Camera Toolwindow, it will bring up a web browser window for you to login to thecamera. The default username is admin with a blank password (thispart is not in that stupid printed manual that came in the box withthe camera..but luckily you threw it in the trash.)Step 4: This is important: save yourself some grief and use InternetExplorer to get this thing setup. You can play around with Firefox andother browsers all you want later, but for sake of simplicity, justuse IE for now. Since you're using IE you'd use the first set oflogin parameters on the login page.Step 5: Now that you are logged in, you should see an Active X requestso go ahead and right click and install it. Then you may need to runan additional app that pops up before you can see the video stream.Step 6: Hey wow! There you are in the video if you've got it pointedat yourself. So far so good. I played around a bit at this point,panning the camera left, right, up, down..pretty nice! Cut out thelights...yep..can still see me in the dark...except now I've got bigdevilish pupils. Now you need to configure all of the settings underadministrator (on the bottom left of the screen).You need to decide how you will get to the camera over the Internet.I've got a DynDNS account, but it's a whole lot more easy to just useport forwarding on my router. So I picked an available port, gave itsome random name, and pointed that port to the fixed IP of the camera. You'll also need to be sure you get all of your settings deadaccurate correct, otherwise your wireless won't work. Make sure yourSSID is correct, your Auth Key is correct, Encryption type, etc. etc.If just one thing is wrong, you won't be able to go wireless. Forcertain settings in your camera, it may need to reboot thecamera..kind of annoying but it is what it is. Once you get all ofyour wireless settings correct, you can remove the network cable fromthe back of the camera. Your camera should still show up in the IPCamera Tool window. If not, you did something wrong. If so, you'renow ready to go wireless. To test, I used:[...] :AssignedPortIUsed Works great!Regarding the email: because of the poor use of English, when you areputting in SMTP server account settings (if you chose to have it emailyou pictures when motion trips the alarm) then BE SURE YOU CLICKSUBMIT AFTER YOU ENTER ALL OF THE INFORMATION AND BEFORE BEFORE BEFORE**BEFORE** YOU CLICK ON "TEST". The camera will not take the settingsuntil you click on SUBMIT. So make sure you SUBMIT before you TEST.I got hung up on this for about 30 minutes of KNOWING my settings werecorrect, but couldn't figure out why the camera said it couldn'tconnect to my account. I even did the whole Telnet routine to connectmanually to the SMTP port because I knew my settings were correct.CLICK SUBMIT BEFORE YOU TEST.Regarding the motion alarm: I used the scheduling for the motion alarmto trip when I'm at work...so I put in my work schedule. No one shouldbe walking around inside my home while I'm not there. If they do, I'vegot them on video straight to my cell phone, in which case I'dpromptly call the police.Well, that's about it for me. It works great. Also, as one of thereceiving email accounts, I wanted to mention that you can use youremail to text with your cell phone company (I have tmobile, so it's[...] ) so now when the motion is trippedon your camera, it will send the pictures via SMS text to your cellphone. I can't say enough good things about this camera. I just hopeit stands the test of time..and maybe I'll come back and do a followup review in a few months.Have fun! Merry Christmas!
78 of 86 people found the following review helpful.
Basic IP camera, poor low light performance
By R. Hilton
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RZSJ99FB4Z7VN I have been using this camera for 2 days in my home's security monitoring system. The camera does well in daylight and serves images over its web server around 30 FPS at 320 x 240 resolution.However, at night, the camera turns on its IR LEDS, this apparently draws a lot of power and the camera's frame rate drops to only 7 FPS.For simple monitoring of your home while you are away, it is easy to setup and use, the web server includes buttons to turn the camera left/right and up/down and to make small adjustment to brightness and contrast.The customer image that is labeled "Kitchen - 2010-07-08 01:24:48" is an image capture during the night where a cat jumped onto my kitchen island. It's hard to tell it's a cat from the single frame. This camera may not be that useful as a security camera because the quality of the images, especially in darkness, is poor.
See all 99 customer reviews...
Challenging to set up
as of 6/2012, the bad reviews seem true
