web cams

[Tom Metro]

Stephen Adler wrote:
> ...I need to get a few stand alone, perhaps wireless web cams. 
> I assume these devices all have a micro apache web server running in
> them so accessing them from a linux box should be no problem...

The majority of the IP cameras selling for under $300 are designed and
built in Taiwan or China. They pretty much all use embedded Linux, but
rarely make the source available. They generally have lousy, buggy firmware.

I doubt they run Apache, but they do run an embedded web server.
However, the developers of most were lazy, and used ActiveX plugins to
implement the video viewer, and in many cases to perform setup, too.
This makes them dependent on Windows/IE.

It's becoming more common for the cameras to now support other browsers,
though often with reduced functionality. (TRENDnet cameras are like
this, for example.)

I wish the hardware vendors would focus on making reliable, functional
hardware, and provide just bare-bones firmware with good APIs for
getting video and audio streams out of the cameras. Leave the
development of fancy firmware to third parties. Once you scale up beyond
one or two cameras, you're better off monitoring them with software like
ZoneMinder, which means most of the camera's firmware functionality goes
to waste, and just makes the camera hardware to integrate and more
likely to crash.


> Any suggestions?

I'm currently shopping for a replacement for a pan/tilt camera I bought
a few years ago that has lost its ability to reliably move. I haven't
decided yet whether to replace it with another P/T camera or a couple of
fixed cameras.

One place to do some research is:
http://www.cctvforum.com/

In the P/T realm:
TRENDnet TV-IP422W
Foscam FI8908W
(http://foscam.us/foscam-fi8908w-wireless-ip-camera-pan-tilt-wpa-audio-%28white%29-p-41.html)

In the fixed realm:
TRENDnet TV-IP312W
Foscam FI8909W-NA


The Foscam cameras have a lot of features for the price (and apparently
there are knockoffs on eBay that are even cheaper), but they get
complaints about image quality.

But it's hard to find any IP cameras that don't have rather mixed
reviews. Even the far more expensive Axis IP cameras often have mixed
reviews. Between lighting conditions, WiFi performance, monitoring
software, and the skills of the user/installer, there are a lot of
variables that lead to varying impressions.

It's also worth noting that most of these cheaper cameras don't have
automatic iris control, so if you place it near a window that isn't
shaded from sunlight, expect the image to get washed out for part of the
day.

The ones with IR LEDs do, however, tend to do a pretty good job of
providing a low light image, and I would recommend them over the models
without.

I own a couple of the TRENDnet TV-IP312Ws, but haven't used them enough
to give an opinion.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/