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Friday, March 19, 2010

For the price, SecureView Wireless Internet Camera Server (TV-IP110W) does a great job

By Just Al (FORT COLLINS, CO United States)
I was looking for was an IP camera that could detect motion and then capture a still image every 5 to 10 seconds until that motion ceased. The included SecurView software doesn't allow you to capture a single image, but it will allow you to record a short movie when motion is detected. (You can apparently specify the maximum size of the movie file). Alas, Linux is the only OS that I run 24/7 in this house, and SecurView only runs under Windows.

Someone here said that they got this camera to work with ZoneMinder (ZM) which runs under Linux, but I was not successful. (Apparently, there is a kludge you can patch into ZM to skip some extraneous garbage the camera injects into the video stream. I'm looking for something with a smaller foot-print than ZM, so I never tried that patch. BTW, the URI for video is /cgi/mjpg/mjpeg.cgi - don't hit that with your browser though). You can get an image from the camera into a browser by hitting the camera with the URI /cgi/jpg/image.cgi. But ZM didn't like that either, even using the username:password@host/URI format. (Rumor is that the camera is either missing or generating invalid HTTP headers so ZM can't handle it - and sorry dude, it's a TRENDnet problem).

I didn't have any trouble getting wireless networking going, WPA2-PRS using AES, (thanks to someone else here who explained the work-around for setting the channel number). I did have to barrow a laptop running Windows to do the configuration. :-\ (The configuration software is browser based, but it requires an Active-X control to do video streaming -- in order to set up motion detection in the camera -- so you have to use MSIE - as advertised). But the configuration user interface (in the camera itself) is feature rich and I thought that I'd died and gone to Linux heaven. (The camera itself is actually running Linux, hit the URI /cgi/systemlog.cgi for the camera's syslog).

You can specify an NTP server to get date/time at camera boot. You can turn off the LEDs on the front of the camera. You can time-stamp the video/images. You can create user accounts (on the camera) with unique passwords. You can configure an FTP 'event server' (active or passive) to which you can upload snapshots while viewing live video, You can give the camera a name that it uses as part of the path name to where it uploads images via FTP. (Also includes the date). You can configure motion detection (in the camera) using two adjustable portals within the view, and FTP those images to your FTP server. You can configure an EMAIL server for the same reason - I didn't try it, someone else says here says it works. You can specify 'schedule triggers' (based on specific days and times) and upload snapshots to your FTP or EMAIL server. These are all configuration items within the camera.

Be aware that there are other issues with this camera. Motion detection (in the camera anyway) appears to be based on changes in the ambient light. (I get lots of false detections at dawn and dusk). Night vision isn't great - street light alone isn't enough. The rumor is that the camera crashes every couple of days too. (Someone posted a work-around for that however: they just invoke the URI /cgi/restart.cgi every midnight to reboot the camera -- and I presume that this person is also running an NTP server, to reset the date/time in the camera.) And, I wouldn't call the software configuration in the camera all that 'intuitive'.

Windows users should be very happy with SecurView, which definitely allows you to watch real-time video and supports multiple cameras. SecurView can definitely detect motion and capture movies when motion occurs. (Over a wireless network, I don't think that you'd be able to monitor more than 3 or 4 live feeds).

If you want to use this camera under Linux, (to watch live video) you can apparently get ZoneMinder working by patching and compiling ZM yourself. Or, just use schedules and motion detection to FTP or EMail snap-shots up to your server. The 640x480 JPEG images take up about 40K per snap-shot.

For the cost, this security camera does a terrific job. And now that I've figured out how to use it, I'm going to buy a couple more for home security usage.

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