IP/Network Camera for my house - love it!

[Semper Fidelis]

Amazon.com: Foscam FI8910W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with IR-Cut Filter for True Color Images - 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) - Black NEWEST MODEL: Camera & Photo

My wife and I were trying to figure out a way to talk to the kids when downstairs or upstairs without yelling at the top of our lungs. We have three stories with a basement and let's just say that when Sonya and I are in the basement at night, the kids aren't always obedient to the letter of the law: thou shall not play upstairs.

Anyway, I was getting a little weary of hearing feet upstairs and having to walk up two flights of stairs so I bought this camera.

It has a lot of pretty cool uses. You can log into it from any website to look at the camera (provided you have your router to accept traffic from outside your home). I have an iPhone/iPad app that lets me look in on the home and pan and tilt the camera over 3G. I showed it to a cousin who owns a restaurant and he wants one to look in on his property. It has motion detection, ability to record video, etc and you can set it all up to have multiple cameras in multiple locations.

Anyway, love this thing. Kids actually think its kind of cool we can talk to them through the camera and hear them running around. The IR feature helps me see into their rooms and who is running around. Since the baby's room is up there too we use it as a baby monitor. Way cheaper than any video baby monitor would be and it has so many other features. I'll probably end up getting one for each floor.

When it first came in, I set it up and then, from work, started talking to my kids from my phone.

 

[fredtgreco]

Rich, does this device connect wirelessly to your network, or does it need an Ethernet cable?

 

[toddpedlar]

Looks like it's got wireless capabilities from the description.... might have to get some of these b/c we've got the same kids-two-floors-up problem Rich does.

 

[py3ak]

Rich, what are the risks of someone hacking into the camera remotely?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Rich, does this device connect wirelessly to your network, or does it need an Ethernet cable?

It's wireless. It's quite remarkable for the price.

One of the fun things was setting it up. I had to figure out how to set up port mapping. I picked a pretty obscure port number to map to the device (which you can set from your router as well as on the device). With that, however, I still needed to know the precise IP of the device in order to "browse" to the device. My ISP does not provide static IP's (except for business class internet) which meant that I couldn't rely on my IP being static. Now I knew I could figure out what the IP was remotely because I have an OpenDNS app on my desktop that keep track of the IP of my machine so it can communicate back to OpenDNS for what it will filter for me.

That said, I still didn't want to have to keep track of the IP and change it in my iPhone app every time the IP got updated so I went to a free DNS service and established a free domain name that maps to my router. Not only so but it also has a client on my machine that will keep the service updated as to what that IP is.

All in all, it was a lot of fun geeking out on the project. I think they are absolutely fantastic devices for the price and they would be perfect for a low cost security system. You can set the motion detection level on them and could send an alert to you (or someone else) if motion is detected somewhere. You can also record (from your computer or iphone) what you see.

Of course you can also remind your kids at night that they need to get in bed, which is how I use mine.

Rich, what are the risks of someone hacking into the camera remotely?

There's always a risk for such things but they would need to know the exact port I have opened on my router that maps to the camera's internal IP address and then they would need to know the username and password of the camera.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Rich,

I'm glad to hear that your kids enjoy being spied upon. You are doing a good job preparing them to live in the America of tomorrow!

 

[OPC'n]

Rich,

I'm glad to hear that your kids enjoy being spied upon. You are doing a good job preparing them to live in the America of tomorrow!

lol

 

[Edward]

tomorrow

Tomorrow? Come to Dallas and play 'count the cameras'. I spotted 24 in one block.

 

[py3ak]

Thanks, Rich - that seems like a reasonable level of risk.

 

[Jack K]

Rich,

I'm glad to hear that your kids enjoy being spied upon. You are doing a good job preparing them to live in the America of tomorrow!

Yeah, my kids are too old. They would certainly feel spied on. Plus, friends come and sleep over and such. This sounds appropriate only for little ones. We did consider a (less geeky) camera set-up when ours were younger.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I know it's a joke but the equivalent of a video monitor for little kids is hardly spying. If I told you guys I spent $300 for a video baby monitor to watch our youngest I doubt any would refer to it as spying. Obviously, with any video camera you have to use it appropriately.