The Linksys Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera sends live video through the Internet to a web browser anywhere in the world! This compact, self-contained unit lets you keep track of your home, your kids, your workplace — whatever’s important to you. Unlike standard “web cams” that require an attached PC, the Internet Home Monitoring Camera contains its own web server, so it can connect directly to a network, either over Wireless-G (802.11g) networking, or over 10/100 Ethernet cable. Choose either MPEG-4 or Motion JPEG video compression for a high-quality, high-framerate, up to 640×480 video stream.
The Compact Internet Home Monitoring Camera’s unique form-factor and wireless connectivity allows you to mount it on a wall nearly anywhere, or slip it into its included stand for desktop use. Once it’s connected to your home network, you can “see what it sees” from any PC in the house, while the video stream is secured from the outside world, hidden behind your Router. If you want the video to be visible from outside your home network, you can open an appropriate port on the Router, and then create password protected accounts to manage access to the camera, or leave it wide open for the world to see. The TZO domain service (one-year trial sign-up included) lets you access your camera using an easy-to-remember “name”, even if your home Internet connection uses a dynamic IP address.
Customer feedback:
1. The network setup was fairly straightforward, I did one camera via the included Linksys software and one by accessing the cameras firmware directly. The camera’s have fixed-focus, so if you’re taking pictures through a window, it’s nice to know that the camera won’t focus on glare in the window instead of the area of interest. The camera’s mount is adjustable and has screw mount points so you can fasten it to where you need. The picture quality is OK, we only expected basic video quality, not high-def, that would take too much storage capability for video capture. The motion capture function for video is a nice addition, though there are some issues with that.
The software allows you to monitor multiple feeds, and via the camera’s firmware, allows you to set up motion capture, and FTP or email setup so that you can view your video from anywhere you have internet access. I haven’t set up streaming video yet…
2. The basic setup is to plug in the camera to the router with the Cat 5 cable. Now the trick is to find out what address the router gave to the camera. Look on the back of the camera to find the MAC address. Now open Airport Utility>Manual Setup>Advanced>Logging &SNMP>Logs&Statistics>DHCP Clients. Now you see a list of IP addresses and MAC addresses. Look for the Mac address that matches the sticker on the back of your camera. That is the IP address for your camera.
Now you type ‘http://’ followed by the IP address of your camera into your browser. You will find the camera and use ‘admin’ for both the user name and password. Now you can set it up as you would like. I set up my camera wireless, made it a static IP address, and gave it a unique port, gave it a new new name and password. Then I set up Port forwarding on my router (this is only if you want to be able to see it from the internet & requires more set up). I unplugged it and disconnected the ethernet athen plugged it into the power and it works great wirelessly.
