D-Link DCS-1000W 802.11b Wireless Webcam

Rating:
Summary: terrible low light ability
Review: First the good. The camera is very easy to setup, and the picture is nice. Now the bad. The frame rate is terrible. I have yet to see 20fps on any setting. At 640X480, I get 1.5fps average. I have a DI-624 as my wireless router, and I am very familiar with setting it up, so I don't think this is the problem. Another annoying thing is that the frame rate is very inconsistant. One time I had the camera at 11fps. By the time I got my wife into my office to take a look, I was at 0.6fps. The camera will also freeze up for no reason. I use the included software with motion detection and have been monitoring traffic outside my window as a test of the software. It has great detection, but sometimes the camera will freeze up for 2 hours or more, so what good is the great motion detection if there is no picture for the software to monitor? Not sure I can recommend this camera for any security operation. So what is it good for? Not sure.

UPDATE: I have gotten the camera to stabilize somewhat by keeping the ambient temperature constant. I narrowed down the times it was flaking out to the time of day that the sun peaked through the window and hit the camera. The sun was not hitting the lens, but it seemed to be heating up the camera. I used an IR temp gun to measure the case temp and it was not over the 50 degrees celsius that the camera is rated at, so maybe I got an overly sensitive one or something. I went ahead and bumped my rating up to 3 stars, which is probably overly generous.

Rating:
Summary: Buggy!!!
Review: First the good. The camera is very easy to setup, and the picture is nice. Now the bad. The frame rate is terrible. I have yet to see 20fps on any setting. At 640X480, I get 1.5fps average. I have a DI-624 as my wireless router, and I am very familiar with setting it up, so I don't think this is the problem. Another annoying thing is that the frame rate is very inconsistant. One time I had the camera at 11fps. By the time I got my wife into my office to take a look, I was at 0.6fps. The camera will also freeze up for no reason. I use the included software with motion detection and have been monitoring traffic outside my window as a test of the software. It has great detection, but sometimes the camera will freeze up for 2 hours or more, so what good is the great motion detection if there is no picture for the software to monitor? Not sure I can recommend this camera for any security operation. So what is it good for? Not sure.

UPDATE: I have gotten the camera to stabilize somewhat by keeping the ambient temperature constant. I narrowed down the times it was flaking out to the time of day that the sun peaked through the window and hit the camera. The sun was not hitting the lens, but it seemed to be heating up the camera. I used an IR temp gun to measure the case temp and it was not over the 50 degrees celsius that the camera is rated at, so maybe I got an overly sensitive one or something. I went ahead and bumped my rating up to 3 stars, which is probably overly generous.

Rating:
Summary: terrible low light ability
Review: Ok, I bought this camera to watch my kid in a room while they were asleep. I'm telling you this camera barely shows anything in anything but full light conditions. Horrible. If there is light though, it does ok, hence the 2 star rating. But low light conditions, 0 star. This camera also has buggy software and will not accept your router configuration completely. You must not disable SSID transmission (like I had for security reasons)otherwise the camera doesn't transmit to your router either. Now this is a basic security issue with wireless routers, you should not have to transmit your SSID to everyone in the world, not good for security. So if you only need to have this operational in the day and don't care about details, then it will work. But I personally regret buying it, too expensive for its performance. Very weak in low light, almost ridiculous.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't be Easier to Install and Configure
Review: The installation of this camera is simply plugging it into a wall socket and either accessing its web based interface via it's IP address wirelessly or wired. Then from there you can set everything, like FTP upload times, new IP address, picture quality, etc. After configuring it all the way I wanted I unplugged it from my PC and the wall and mounted it where it was going to stay. After mounting I plugged it into the wall and thats it. I have done little tweaking to the setting since my initial setup, but I didn't have to move the camera, and when you have this convienence of wireless it is hard not to appreciate it.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Easy to get Working the Way You Want
Review: With all the features this thing has it is no wonder it is this price. I am sure the price will go down soon. I have a wireless network and I thought it would be real cool to actually have a camera that did everything itself and didn't need a wired connection to my network. I just set it by a plug and it connects to my network with little work at all. Then by entering the IP address of the camera I can configure it to upload a picture every minute to an FTP site which can then be viewed by everyone on the web. It took me about an hour to figure out how all this was working and to make a page to display the image.

I would recommend this to someone who has the money or if you're like myself you can split the bill with a friend and share it.