Cheap yet effective IP Cam solutions?

[notoriousformula]

hey guys, a friend of mine recently got a retail store and wants me to help him w/ some remote surveillance.. I checked out the local stores and founds lots of them selling cheap looking(quality wise..) Orite IPCam for $129 cdn.. they don't have an open box or one on display showing the FPS and quality of the cam on net. kinds skeptic about buying these as Asian stores here don't have a very good exchange or return policies . I checked the Orite site, the live demo of the cam is not working..lol.

So, i need your help finding a cheap yet effective IP cam which transmits good video/avi/mpeg4 to net which canbe viewed remotely.. Has any1 tried D-link or the Linksys offerings in this area?

Please help..

 

[BoboKatt]

You know I have been toying with this exactly. I am actually trying to set up one for my dad's office and warehouse. I have read the DLINK ones are great but can be a bit pricy. Depends if you are looking more for the wireless ones or even if wired if it is of the B or G speed variant. I have been trying to get information about the many variants sold on Ebay... there are lots. The quality seems fine with any one of those or the D-Link ones however many or most use it to snap pics in jpg format at intervals and it would either email them to a designated address or store them to an FTP server.

The direct quality of remote video is still a mistery to me -- I have no experience with that and would love to know if anyone has tried or used one as well. I am still thinking that however good the IP cam is, it will still be limited to bandwidth of the network and of course the internet when you start viewing it remotely.

 

[jbritt1234]

I don't have any specific things to recomend, but I toyed with this for about 20 minutes a year or more ago. I bought a D-Link wireless camera and was hoping to somehow "stream" it to the Internet. It siad it had a built in web server and I hoped that ment it would send out the pics automatically. Nope... Not the ones back then anyway. You had to have a PC set up to relay them basically, also all the programs I used to do that basically made it dificult to use for anything else.

I would suggest going to a place that sells security equipment. More of a commercial electronics place, not your local BestBuy etc. Just tell them I want to spend X dollars what's available for that. Then you can always go price the stuff somewhere else if you want.

If he wants to go the cheap-o route, you could always set up a old pc, attach a web-cam to it and have that sent to a site on the internet. It's pretty easy to set up a web page that updates it's image every second or whatever from a webcam. Put the PC under the counter, set the webcame wherever and just let it run.

 

[Wik]

I have never tried any sort of IP cam, but I thought about this one for a baby cam at one time. It states built in Web Server, and I think that is what you are asking for. A stand alone Web Cam and web server. Says 25 fps. CompGeeks, so the quality is a crap shoot.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=WHT-9000A-PLUS-N&cat=VID

 

[w0ss]

Have you looked at the "SmileCam" it is a pan/tilt camera for 100$ the quality/software seems decent. Check out the Website they have demo cameras that show the quality. I never bought one but I am thinking of now as my water heater burst the other day and I had no way of knowing.

 

[w0ss]

I just realized after I posted that you were looking for an IP cam solution. That is only a USB camera although if you had a pc always on it would work as an ip camera.

 

[SilthDraeth]

I have no personal experience, but maybe a look at this website IPCameraReports will help you out.

I have no experience on wether or not their ratings are accurate. But it seems a good place to start.

 

[loup garou]

Personally, I would spend the extra couple bucks and get an Axis cam. The 206 (wired) is under $250 and the 207w is about $275. You can't beat Axis quality.

 

[eDRoaCH]

If you want truly amazing, check out the sony IPELA line, they are pricy as hell but AMAZING, 22x optical 40digital zoom, movement tracking, etc

probably not what you want but seriously, really cool.

one thing to note is b&w cameras are generally MUCH higher rez and much more faitful in a variety of lighting than color