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The Amission Tritium Ipcam 200W is a wireless IP camera that can operate independently of a PC.
It's a security product that also boasts mobile phone streaming so footage can be accessed from a mobile phone's browser.
The camera is fairly easy to assemble and comes with screws so you can mount it on a wall in your home.
For initial setup you must plug the camera directly into your router via an Ethernet cable.
A program, rather confusingly called Installation Wizard, can be used to find the Ipcam 200W's IP address on a home network. Be warned though, this tool isn't automatically installed with the main software and wouldn't work on our corporate network.
In the home, it's perhaps just as easy to log into a router and note down the IP address for the camera.
Installation is both difficult and unnecessarily time consuming. For example. it's not until page 16 of the 67-page manual that you find out the default username is 'root' and not the name you chose when you installed the software.
Once you're logged into the camera, the 802.11g wireless feature can be enabled, meaning the camera can sit anywhere within range of a wireless router.
ActiveX controls must be installed to set up the camera; this means it is only compatible with Internet Explorer and rules out other browsers.
Further complexities arise since the camera's IP address must be added as a trusted site, with the security level set to the lowest possible setting before the unsigned ActiveX control will install.
From Internet Explorer, the camera is completely customisable. As well as defining the quality of the video you want to stream (so you can reduce quality and save bandwidth or vice versa), you can also do things such as turn off the front LED or upload photos to an ftp server. Motion detection can also be set up to trigger recording.
Knowledge of your domain name service (dns) settings is required to stream video outside of a home network, including streaming 3GPP video to 3G mobile phones. Unless you're on a fixed-rate data tariff, streaming live video to your mobile can be very expensive.
A Cmos sensor provides a 640x480 resolution video stream at 30 frames per second (fps) and the resulting picture quality was good.
Bundled Windows software allows for further tweaking. It is complex, with a baffling array of windows provided so that up to 16 different Tritium Ipcams can be monitored at the same time.
The camera's build quality is good, however the inclusion of a manual focus feature is a double-edged sword – if you're viewing the camera from a remote location, there's no way of adjusting it if the image is blurred. Careful attention to the focus is therefore required during setup.
There are no help files, software or firmware updates on Amission's website – a worrying sign as to the amount of support on offer.
Ultimately, £171 is a quite a high price to pay for a wireless IP camera such as this. Picture quality is good, but it is very difficult to set up.
Security engineers will appreciate the scalability to monitor up to 16 cameras, but most home users will be better off with cheaper, easier-to-use alternatives.
See also:
Network surveillance for next to nothing... almost 09 Apr 2007
A high-quality wireless network camera with a one-megapixel sensor 15 Mar 2007
A low-cost way to monitor your home via the internet 20 Dec 2006All Wireless Tags: IP Camera
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