Anyone tried one of those cheap ip pan and tilt cams??

[GraemeT]

I bought a similar camera from DealExtreme for $au64 shipped to Aus.
It's a clone of a Foscam FI8918W

Seems to work ok with the following gotchas:
Colours are HORRID in most lighting conditions - trees, grass, etc range from pale pink to deep purple (a bit psychedelic - reminds me of an acid trip in 1969)
Wifi range is not bad, but pan/tilt response gets very slow if more than about 6 metres and 2 walls away.
Inbuilt webpages are functional, but menus don't work, so you have to call them up by name.

My assessment: you get what you pay for.

I hope this is helpful.

Here's an image from it:

picture1.jpg

[Rickgreen]

We have one ourselves.
Ours is marked up as Tenvis, but I have seen countless identical cameras all with different names on them.
There does however, seem to be a variation in the software that it comes with. I have seen just as many software/firmware variants.
All I can add is from my experience, using the Tenvis variant, spot on for the money, it does what it says on the box, it is very stable and recovers well from power outage and the likes and even has two way audio!
We use ours to keep an eye on our summerhouse and we even, very easily set it up to be viewed via the internet.
We actually have a few ipcams and this one I would say is the best of the bunch, even better than one I have at twice the price.
All I can say is you pay your money and take your choice, but as long as you are not expecting hi res or broadcast quality, then I don't think you can go too far wrong.
I know others have had picture issues with theirs, but I wonder if they maybe have faulty units? Also, I did once purchse a ipcam direct from China and because of the difference in the encoding and colour frequencies etc, I got some crazy colours which needed passing through some software filters to put right.
Best advice there I think is to buy the one intended for your country/terratory to make sure the codecs are correct ( there is a difference believe me).

[pete_c]

Answering the OP; I have a Foscam PT camera in the garage. The first gen Foscam PT locked up and I worked with Foscam CS to update the firmware and while I did update it the camera will run but constantly locks up. I then purchased the newer gen Foscam PT. The newest generation has very bright LEDs and does a good job illuminating the garage with no lights on. That said I can lock up the camera opening the garage door and doing a PT at the same time. Until I had Zoneminder's ring buffers correctly set I would lock up the camera with Zoneminder. Its been over a year now and its working fine although the picture quality could be better.

I have been looking at a megapixel PT generic camera which looks to be a bit better than the Foscam; meanwhile I started to play a couple of months ago with the newer lower cost MP IP cameras and they are not too bad. The newer gen MP Foscam looking camera will also be sold for around $100.

Both of the test cameras were under $150 USD. The Ubiquito is small. Its so small that it shakes in the wind. Other than having dual streams its a basic no frills plastic camera priced at around $100 USD. That said there is no night vision/IRs but the picture quality is fine and it utilizes a propietary Ubiquito POE.

The second IP megapixel camera is of better quality but kind of large and it was $127 USD. It is a generic IP MP camera with 4 very bright (cree like) LEDs. There are heat sinks inside of the camera and behind the LEDs. The heat sinks get warm. I modified the camera such that it would work with standard POE using a small 48V to 12VDC poe adapter. There are many more features on the generic IP camera.

One of the above will be the next weathercam replacing the analog one in place. Here are a couple of pictures from the IP cameras.


The generic MP IP camera has a 3.6mm lens and the Ubiquito Aircam has a 4.0mm lens on it.

MPCams-1.jpg

[TNETWeather]

I like how the Ubiquito 1MP adds all those clouds to the picture... pretty realistic and cool...

[pete_c]

Note this is not an attempt to sell Ubiquito Aircams. They are really just a cheap no frills first attempt at the introduction of a "name brand" MP camera. The no name generic larger IP camera for a similiar price is levels above the Aircam.

That said the Aircam came needing me to adjust the lens as it was not in focus (not a really easy thing to do nor a good selling point); reason for verbiage on the pictures.

I am getting ready to test a full 1080 HD smaller footprint/POE generic IP camera which will be similiarly priced ($100 USD).

All of the pictures are real; they have not been modified, air brushed in any way. They are different sizes though dependant on the RTSP/MJPEG stream and via my Zoneminder box (8 analog and 5 IP cams on it today).

Last "experiment" with Ubiquito was changing the lens to a 3.6mm lens. Worked fine except the colors were totally off and I would have to cut the "lens spring" to fit the new lens and put an IR filter on the lens to correct the color rendition.

My "weather cam" goal though is to replace the current analog camera with an IP HD camera. The cabling is there but its mounted in a difficult to reach location so I am testing various IP HD cams in a different location.

Here's my current WUN weather camera picture. I "embed" weather data / jpgs etc into it via some scripting. 2nd one is switching to test IP camera view. I use these snapshots for my touchscreens and weathercam pics.

http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamram ... urrent.jpg