Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Getting started

Upon returning to the homestead I opened the box and got started; it comes with a neat little wall wart power supply and a setup CD. Having a Mac (and no desire to go through what looks like an unnecessary config process using a Windows VM session) I decided to connect it up to ethernet and use the in built web server to configure it. Out of the box it uses a static IP address on ethernet and was a doddle to configure it to use the wifi and get it fired up.

I won't go through the procedure (it is well documented in the instructions) but it didn't take long to get it streaming video into firefox, albeit without audio as it requires IE for the web client's activex control to stream both video and audio to it.

Out of curiosity I connected to it from a windows VMware session with IE and found it also supports 2 way audio and motion detection - quite impressive for such a low cost device although the handicapping for anything not using the activex control is a bit of a pain.

A quick port scan revealed it was listen on HTTP and RTSP; I would have to look elsewhere to get to the console.

I also connected to it using VLC player (using RTSP) and joy - the audio and video both work perfectly - this should make it easier to use with the target devices I had in mind.

The video quality is ok - I wasn't expecting amazing results, but it is certainly suitable for our needs. There is a slight purple tinge to the image, but I think this is due to the sensor being IR sensitive. Streaming is pretty good - it can get a little choppy at times, but i suspect this is due to the WiFi network being congested rather than an issue with the camera itself. I am still pondering the merits of WiFi over Ethernet, with all the possible implications on the little mites health; I haven't discounted the idea of using Ethernet when it is being used for the baby.

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