"IP Camera" - Dealextreme cheapie. WORKS.

[Flash_]

I got one of these;

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.41929

No branding anywhere.

$57 us (About £38 uk)

Features: IR LED's. DDNS. (Untested) Um, that's it.

Usual long delivery (5 weeks, but it's xmas, usually 3).

Plug is US, but it's 5vdc and I used a poe splitter. Also some axis and y-cam adapters will work. It's the larger of the standard power sockets.

No paper manual, only tiny cd with manual for the camera and supplied 4-cam viewing software. (Not used)

Shows up on DHCP fine, but prompts for user/pass. This information is not given in any documentation.

However, the CD also contains a windows executable which locates the camera by ARP fine, and allows you to do some of the configuration, including setting user/pass remotely. (Insecure since you can change pass without knowing it first!) You can also remove prompt entirely by setting username and password blank. It allows for you to manually set the IP here too.

Note: There does not appear to be any way of changing this password or the settings EXCEPT using this Windows tool. If you're linux only, you're going to have to play with Wine or borrow a winbox.

Web UI very sparse. Size buttons and quality on left, that's about it.

Biggest problem is it's not MJPG as advertised. It's JPG only and the web wrapper uses javascript to refresh constantly. This means it doesn't allow you to stream to a montage with <IMG> tags.

However, zoneminder works ok.

Source tab:

Remote method: Simple
Remote hostname: IP address. If using authentication, preceed with user:pass@. Ie: admin:password@192.168.0.1
Remote host port: 80
Remote host path: /image.jpg
Colours: 24 bit colour
Width: 640
Height: 480

Picture quality is average to good. I haven't yet tested infra red, but there seems to be no option to disable them unlike Y-cam etc.

It claims an fps of up to 30, but it's probably half that. It does serve multiple clients ok though. I'm running on 3fps for other reasons.

Mounting bracket pretty flimsy and hard to tighten up. Looks like a standard thread so would fit others. DX also sell a more rigid stand for $2.97 (29605)

Overall: Cheap and cheerful. No idea on reliability yet.

But - it does work with ZM and if you're on a very tight budget it could do the trick.

[Flash_]

Update: Got a second one. Admin username and password now stuck onto camera body, but this one wasn't set on the camera!

Otherwise same as the first.

Has proved reliable with no outages at all over a month.

[kmrs75]

can you post some still shots ?

[Flasheart]

No without compromising the security of the site, sorry.

640x480. Colour balance outside is good. Clarity is good. ISTR there is manual focus but it's a while since I installed it. Been working fine every day.

[Carrier82]

I have been thinking about getting one like that. Are they still operational after almost a year? Are those alarm inputs functional? If so, what happens when you activate alarm? (12V DC?) Thanks.

[Flasheart]

Yeah, both of those I bought back then are still running ok 24/7.

Not sure what you mean about alarm, that's all handled by zoneminder. The camera just provides jpgs one after the other.,

[Carrier82]

According to the pictures at DX site, the camera has "ALARM IN" input connectors (green at the picture) at the back of the camera. As far as I know, these input connectors allow you to attach the camera to an external 12V DC PIR sensor, which activates an alarm. External motion detectors are much more reliable outdoors than image based motion detection. That's why I'm interested to know if the alarm input really works and if, how and what happens when alarm is triggered. Is there any alarm input configuration on the camera web interface, for example ftp or email upload on the camera itself in case of alarm?