For the price, I was surprised at the quality of this camera. The cameras from the huge names such as Cisco are much higher priced, and this one still has all the same features much a much better price. I think that the IR night vision, pan and tilt, and a wireless connection are the best features. It wasn't easy getting the remote viewing set up, and I had to visit some forums to learn a bit about DDNS and port forwarding for viewing over the internet, but I'm proud to say I can now view my camera from anywhere I want!! Genuine LOFTEK Brand CXS 2200 pan(270)/tilt(120)wireless/wired Dual Audio Alarm Ip camera with day/night vision,easy installation,Black
First off, I really like this camera. Mainly I wanted to share some helpful tips with others that may be considering this for purchase.
1. This is a night vision camera. If you use this outside in the daylight colors will appear different than they do to the human eye. This is normal. (It looks like my trees are Cherry Blossom's in full bloom. Kind of cool.)
2. They hard code an IP address in the camera and expect to see your home network in the 192.168.0.X range. If it's not, (like mine, it's a 192.168.2.x net) then you may have difficulty getting to the camera from your PC to set it up. I simply backed up my router configs, changed it to a 192.168.0.x network, reset my PC's networking, and I was able to browse to the camera and set it up to where I wanted it.
3. This is an indoor camera. If you plan on pointing it out a window it will work pretty good during the day, but after dark the infrared lights will reflect back off the glass and blind the image. This is normal for this type of camera. You can still point it out the window, but you'll need to do something like cover the existing LED's on the camera and purchase an "infrared illuminator" (there are several on Amazon) and install it outside the window, covering the area you want to see.
4. I have 64 bit Windows7 and could not get the little CD to work for me, but was able to configure the camera just fine via my web browser after I got through the initial networking stuff mentioned above.
On the CON side, I'd have to say that it would have been smarter to simply make the networking DHCP and not have hard coded the IP address. I'm sure a this has confused folks into thinking that their camera was dead on arrival. I'd also like to have an easy way to turn the built in infrared LEDs off if I want to use an external source. That's all the negatives I have though. Great bang for your buck.
I bought a non-PTZ camera to watch my puppy while I was away at work. It's a nice camera but I found that I needed to be able to pan or tilt to see anything beyond the set view. I was skeptical in PTZ cameras being so cheap in price as usually for a good quality one they would be hundreds more. I took a chance on the loftek one and I was very impressed.
I opened the box and everything was there including a little CD for drivers. Well I have a slot loaded CD that can't accept these so I surfed the net to try and find the drivers. no luck. So I wrote support and with a few hours they wrote back saying please send us your regular email and we will send you the drivers. I was skeptical that they actually would but I sent my email anyway and waited. The next day I checked my inbox and low and behold there was a compressed file with all the goodies in it to get me going. Setup was easy and the PTZ option is great. I even setup audio to be the "voice of god" for when my pup is being bad or on the couch. The audio feature works but only with IE.
Now that the dog is pretty well behaved I'm going to move this to an external camera for security. I then told myself, bummer I wish they had white because black really sticks out, at least on my home. I wrote to them and asked if they had any white ones. Within a few hours they replied they would in a couple days. Sure enough I get another email in 2 days stating they now have em on Amazon. Amazing. I ordered 2 more just because the support experience was so good. The price can't be beat and the CS is great. This is my first review ever and I felt I really needed to do it because this experience was by and far the best experience I've had dealing with a company and their product support.
I'm writing this review for people wanting to use this camera on a Mac. I am running Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6 so it will work on both operating systems BUT, you pretty much NEED a PC or PC emulator software to use the set-up software and make any changes to the camera. You also need a PC to setup the wireless. Safari, Chrome or Firefox will only allow you to view the camera image and use the tilt/pan functions from a mac. You can't adjust image size or use advanced alert and FTP settings directly.
Fortunately I have a PC desktop as well and once I got it up and running I was able to set things up. The most difficult part of the set-up was setting up the camera to work remotely. Through the help of a website, portforward.com it walked me through setting up the camera for my particular router and I used the settings from Foscam and that worked.
I had problems getting one of the two camera I am using to work wirelessly and thought it wasn't working but restarting the router solved the problem.
Once I had everything set up on the PC I, I realized that I needed a decent IP camera software that worked on the mac. I decided to purchase Vitamin D software. There is a free version that supports 1 camera but in order to do advanced features such as defining an alarm area and adjusting image size you have to purchase the software. It doesn't, at the moment, control pan tilt, but you can do that from a web browser on the mac (Safari or Chrome, the image never displayed on Firefox).
The camera quality is exactly as expected based upon the earlier reviews. I will say that I wish the camera wasn't so bulky. But for the price, it is something that I can live with.
Knowing all I know now, I probably would prefer a camera with integrated Mac software. But if you have access to a PC to get things up and running you will be ok! - Surveillance Cameras - Wireless Camera - Network Camera - Security Camera'
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
