Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

I bought this on a Gold Box deal and am very glad I did. First, the image quality is superb. TRENDnet supplies software to assist in setting up the camera but people with a bit of technical experience can go straight to the web interface and set things up there and there are some great features that allow you to set this camera up pretty much however you want.

All of the camera settings are configurable – brightness, contrast, saturation, frame rate, resolution, and even settings to synchronize with 50 or 60 Hz lighting or outdoors. It also supports WPA2 encryption and three levels of password-protected access. You can have it grab images based on movement (requires accessing the camera with Internet Explorer to configure that for some reason) or on a time schedule, and either have it e-mail the images or ftp them somewhere. And it supports dynamic domain name configuration so you can access the camera even if your IP address changes.

It also supports time and date stamping the images – pretty much a necessity – but it also supports accessing an NTP server to make sure the onboard clock is accurate.

And once you get the camera all set up the way you want it, you can save out the configuration file to make it a snap to reconfigure it in case you ever do a hard reset that restores all the defaults.

Not that it will matter to most, but this camera server is actually a full ARM-based computer running Linux. If you go to the TRENDnet website, besides getting the latest firmware, you can also get the source code for the camera OS for those that want to tinker.

The final issue is just the value. You are getting a video camera and a web-serving computer with both wired and wireless interfaces for this price. I’m glad I got mine and am using it to monitor my front porch for visitors and also as a way to monitor the weather at home. With multiple cameras, it’s easy to monitor all sorts of things if someone wants to.

I bought one of these cameras, knowing that it was claimed to be reliant on active-x for the video stream, but my Mac-based application could work around that. My early experiments at setup and use were with Firefox and, as expected, the live video wasn’t available. I went thru the setup and put it online and then went to a different machine using Safari (v3.1) and lo and behold: It streamed the video using an ultracam.jar applet. I troubleshot the Firefox installation and found an incompatibility with /library/internet plug-ins/javaplugincocoa.bundle. Once that plug-in was removed, the video stream worked under Firefox with the same ultracam applet. Also tested successfully with Opera v9.62.

Wireless setup and performance are nominal and straightforward, as are the function with DynDNS and emailed events. One must remember that the default IP address of the camera is probably not in the same non-routable range as most use with their LANs.

Mac users should not fear this camera. Sporting features like the NTP clock & timestamp, DynDNS, and price make it a really nice deal.

My first suggestion; leave yourself plenty of time. This will not be accomplished in five minutes. However, I would suspect many of you reading this column are mighty frustrated by now, and are looking to the reviews for assistance. Fact is you will learn more from these reviews than from tech support! Here’s how to set these cameras up (I have four!) TRENDnet Wireless Internet Camera Server (TV-IP110W)

Step 1. Lose the disk and the instruction manual. They are of little use.
Step 2. Enter the […] website, find your camera in download section.
Step 3. Download and install SecureView and IPSetup.
Step 4. Power up the camera and install the ethernet cable to your router.
Step 5. Load IPSetup and find your camera, double click and enter the setup program.
Step 6. Select static IP and record the camera number, configure your settings.
Step 7. Hint! for email notification, ping your mail server and enter the numeric IP.
Step 8. Hint! select this NTP time server for your camera <64.90.182.55> otherwise the camera will forget the time each time you unplug it. This is a pain to reset! Make sure you enter your correct timezone, e.g. GMT -5:00 for Eastern US Time Zone
Step. 9 Port forward your router using the router setup routine. Just do a google on port forwarding!
Step 10. If port forwarding doesn’t work, select another port, e.g. default port ’80’ did not work for me!
Step 11. Hint! You don’t need SecureView to capture and email images! Just enable motion detect on the setup screen.
Step 12. To make sure you can view cameras from a remote location, use a laptop and connect to an unsecured wireless connection, enter “[…]” and record your IP address. Now enter your IP address e.g. […] where the numeric string is your IP and :80 is the port you forwarded under steps 10 and 11.
Step 13. Hint! Do not try to view camera images on your desktop and wireless laptop at the same time! You will lose connectivity to your IP Cam! Each Camera must have a unique port!
Step 15: Sit back and enjoy the view!

PS. Trendnet offers Excellent technical support. They are open on New Year’s Day and were extremely polite and helpful.