Foscam webcam – easy peasy.
My old dlink webcam gave up the ghost after many years reliable service. I had a quick look around for another dlink but they were kind of pricey. I’d never heard of foscam before. I chose ones of those mainly because they were supported by Security Spy which is the webcam recording software I have used happily for many years. I ordered the foscam and then did absolutely noting about setting it up until today. I wish I’d done it earlier. It was so easy!
I plugged it into the mains and plugged it into the nearby network switch. Checked on my router to see which ip address it had picked up. It had found one without a problem. The dlink was more problematic as it was by default set to a fixed ip so you often had to mess about changing the subnet on a machine to find it and then alter it to be the same subnet as your main network was using. No such fuss with the foscam. I reserved the ip for it in the router control panel so it wouldn’t wander around. That’s the beauty of dhcp. The set up cd has a doodad for finding the ip of the webcam. I didn’t use it as the cd wouldn’t read properly. The software is also available from foscam’s site so wouldn’t have been a problem if I had ended up needing it.
Setting it up with Security Spy was straight forward. A similar model was already supported so I chose that and it found it quite quickly. Motion capture works fine and without much messing around.The ptz function in Security Spy seems to be backwards so you have to remember to move it the opposite way round.
The only annoying thing with the foscam is that when you are in the web interface for it a lot of the changes mean the webcam reboots. It makes it more time consuming than it should be. I haven’t updated the firmware away from what was already on it. I will see how reliable this one is first. If it works, leave it alone! The PTZ functions are quite cool but I have it with a fixed field of view so I set it to stay still and also not to return to centre when rebooted. I also switched off the wireless interface and added a password to the admin control panel as it is initially blank. The interface is very similar to the dlink one so it was easy to work with. Works fine on a mac with firefox too. It has other features such as mail alert, motion capture alarm and dynamic dns amongst others.
This webcam also has night vision so it will be interesting to see what lurks after dark.
