Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

You’d think that a security camera would get Internet security right. This one doesn’t even try.

The camera doesn’t support SSL/TLS connections. This means that, every time you log in to the camera across the Internet, your password is going across in the clear, and anyone sufficiently interested can then use that password to log into your camera in your home and watch what you’re doing or record their own copy. Furthermore, even without logging in, your communication with the camera is open for the world to see. This a huge oversight that has no excuse; it’s like installing new locks in a house and leaving the key under the doormat.

If you try to set up email alerts to notify you of certain actions (e.g. motion detection), you’ll find that the camera does not support secure SMTP servers. In other words, every time the camera sends email, it will be sending your email password in the clear, so that interested parties could later log into your email account and do whatever they want.

The product uses a proprietary Internet Explorer ActiveX control, which forces you to use IE instead of a more secure and standards-compliant browser like Firefox. But that’s not bad enough. The ActiveX control apparently has no understanding and support of Vista NTFS permissions. This means that in Vista if you try to record to certain directories on the hard drive, it fails with a cryptic error message—even if the user has administrator rights. The only apparent way to get around this is to run Internet Explorer as Administrator (a special Vista super-user that has more rights than even a user with normal administrator rights), which is a bad idea in general and reflects the outdatedness of the implementation.

There is no way to tell the camera to start recording to the local hard drive when some action occurs. Sure, you can have the camera record to a “network hard drive”, if you can figure out how to set one of those up. Or you can have the camera record to a USB drive hooked up to the camera, which someone can easily steal along with the camera. Or you can manually record to the local hard drive. But you can’t simply leave your browser window open and have the camera only start recording to the local hard drive when there is some activity.

This would be a great little camera if someone with actual security experience had been in charge of its firmware. There is no excuse for these huge lapses in design, ruining what could easily have been a great product.

Update 2011-07-04: I was excited that firmware upgrade 1.1.0 build 72 purports to add SSL support! A closer look reveals that TRENDnet is utterly incompetent when it comes to networking. Yes, the firmware allows you use SSL for the SMTP server (outgoing emails), and this works. But that’s the only good news. While there is now a configuration for specifying an incoming SSL port (default 443), if you try to connect with Internet Explorer 9 you get “Video is not support for HTTPS Protocol.” Lovely. And if you connect from outside the network using Firefox (using port forwarding on the router), the Java applet won’t load, giving “java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: ultracam.class”. And of course the TRENDnet SecurView Mobile Android app doesn’t support SSL in the least. Utter incompetence.

Update 2012-04-20: Now TRENDnet is saying that firmware version V1.1.1 build 74 brings “improved security”. But Firefox still gives a ClassNotFoundException, and IE still says “Video is not supported for HTTPS Protocol”. And of course the Android app still doesn’t support SSL. But security is so important to me, you know what I’m doing? I’m leaving the SSL turned on, even though I can no longer view the video in IE or in Firefox, and I’m using IP Cam Viewer, a third party Android app, to view the live camera stream over SSL on my phone! It’s unbelievable that I have to use software not even written by TRENDnet to view the secure feed. Then again, by now it should be expected.

You can’t find a better device at this price point, but it does come with some annoyances and limitations.

Things I Like:
– Really great night mode via built-in infrared lights.
– Stable. No crashes or hiccups in the month I’ve had it.
– Solid construction. The camera and included mounting bracket are very sturdy.
– MPEG streaming video. Really nice quality, and a fraction of the bandwidth required by MJPEG standards, so there’s less “internet lag.”
– The ability to backup your settings is a nice touch, in case you have to reset the camera for any reason.
– Three year warranty.
– Support for sound. Built-in ability to listen (from IE, not from Firefox/Java) and the ablilty to connect speakers to “talk through” the camera.

This I Dislike:
– Camera gets “stuck” in night mode. Under normal indoor lights, the camera often continues to force itself into night mode, which results in strange washed-out colors. This is made more frustrating by software limitations that don’t allow you to manually control which mode the camera operates in. Seems to work okay in fluorescent lights from office settings. Surely, this is all just a software glitch that will be fixed in an eventual software patch….I hope.
– Always requires a username and password to view the camera. So if you want to just setup a public camera, that’s a frustrating limitation.
– Difficult to remove Trendnet’s “branding” around their live video images – their logo, border, and other stuff. I think this can be done, but it’s certainly going to require web developer skills and a bit of hacking to do it.

Other things you’ll want to know:
– Focusing the camera is done via the focus ring on the front of the housing, not from within the software. So you have to be physically present at the camera to do it. That means you’ll also need your laptop (or a friend on a phone) to know you’re getting it right.
– TrendNet’s site includes a “lobby cam” from their office, as well as a simulated user interface, and digital version of the manuals. That gives you a pretty good feel for what you’re going to get with the camera.
– Viewing this camera from outside your home network is going to require some advanced skills in updating your router’s settings. It’s not especially hard, and there are instructions online to do it. But unless your router supports these settings and you’re willing to tinker with them, many of the camera’s features are going to be unavailable to you.
– The setup was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be, based on other reviews. The need to connect it via a network cable to do the initial setup is a little annoying, but understandable and not too difficult if you’ve read through the manual. The manual is actually pretty well-written – you can download it from the manufacturer’s site to judge for yourself.