Many people would like to have a webcam to watch something. Perhaps it is the front door of your home/office/cottage. Perhaps you have a newborn at home.
Webcams are coming bundled with all sorts of great features and very competitively priced.
The Foscam F18910W was recently brought to my attention as a really good deal.
This webcam has wireless B/G support. This means you only need to run power to where it is and no other wires required (e.g. cat5 ethernet cabling).
It also has Pan Tilt, you can control where it is aiming remotely.
You can have a 2-way conversation with the visitor/intruder.
It supports alerting where it can send you an email with photos if the camera detects motion. Also if you can use the Boxcar App on an iPhone which can give a push notification if it detects motion. You can setup FTP for image uploads.
It has support for a variety of Apps to remote control it on mobile devices. (iPhone, Android, Blackberry)
Colour images during the day and infrared support for night vision (up to 8m).
The best part, it is only $100!
Here is a good video demo on how it works:
You need a bit of technical assistance/knowledge to setup the webcam if you want all the bells and whistles working remotely. e.g. setting up port forwarding on your wirless router to be able to remotely see it. Maybe setting up a dynamic dns hostname if your public IP changes.
Do you have a favorite webcam?
This is awesome! The cam looks pretty cool in itself, and of course the capabilities go without saying.
100$ is pretty affordable as well. Definitely worth a buy if you’re thinking of buying one.
Don’t you think it is sort of scary that we have so many cameras around? They are so cheap and easy to use nowadays that any old chump can have his own. I guess you do sacrifice your privacy when you are on private property owned by another. I am surprised that these cost below $100 now and can be remote controlled so easily. Strange times that we live in. I’m not sure I like it!
@soundabout, good points. I think the potential violation of our privacy is something that should never be taken lightly. The prevalence of cameras is not something I’m comfortable with either.
Also, I think WebCam owners need to be mindful of the risks of hacking and take precautions. While there are so many benefits for people who use these WebCams legitimately — particularly parents who want to keep a watchful eye over their children — there are also, quite unfortunately, privacy-violation risks.
Looks like a cool camera. I have a webcam running to view remotely, but this looks like a huge upgrade. I may have to look in to purchasing this. I also love the ability to control where it is pointing remotely. Under $100 seems like a really good price for the features you listed. Guess I’ll see if this is available on Amazon.
This really seems like a pretty good camera for the price, especially with the features it comes with. I’ve been trying to create my own surveillance camera network by using old android phones connected to my WiFi, because not only is it just having to connect power to the phone, but it’s also really cheap to manage, especially because some android phones go for about $30 on Amazon. One thing I’d like to see though is a mesh network for cameras, where you wouldn’t have to be in range of your WiFi to connect to the camera, but just in range of another camera. While it may not allow cameras extremely far away stream with low latency, it would still allow recording of some magnitude.