TRENDnet SecurView Wireless Day/Night Pan/Tilt/Zoom Internet Surveillance Camera TV-IP422W (White)
by TRENDnet
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List Price: Our Price: $209.99 You Save: $85.00 (29%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $179.00 (click here) Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TRENDnet SecurView Wireless Day/Night Pan/Tilt/Zoom Internet Surveillance Camera TV-IP422W (White)
Customer Review: Really Good Camera for the Money
Summary: 4 Stars
I have two of these cameras installed and running in my home, and I'm quite satisfied with them. Stability has been really good - over several weeks operation, using FTP Upload and Send Email on triggering, I haven't experienced the wireless dropout problems that some have reported. I'm impressed with the setup flexibility available. My units are installed in corners, about seven feet high, mounted upside down. The Mirror Vertical/Horizontal options make that a workable arrangement.
It takes some time and expertise to set the cameras up, but the results are well worth the time. I can check the cameras or change settings and positioning from anywhere via the Trendnet browser extension, or look and select presets from my iPhone via the Eyecam app. The infrared capability is useful, as long as you are viewing over a very short distance. It can't do a thing for a fully darkened room, though. I'm considering getting a more powerful LED infrared lamp to provide full room lighting. Motion Detection works well, as long as distance to the motion is small, or nominal room lighting is available.
There are a few minor shortcomings. The 12v power adapter cord is too short to reach from the mounted position to a normally positioned wall plug, even if it is directly below the camera. I ended up installing concealed duplex outlets inside the walls, with a double low voltage mounting wall bracket and cover plate for access, with flex plastic tubing from the plug area to the camera, for easy removal and replacement if the adapters should ever fail. The orientation of the AC prongs on the adapter makes it impossible to plug them in with this inside-the-wall arrangement on a normal outlet, but a new duplex outlet made by 360electrical saved the day for me. It allows the receptacles to be rotated, which worked like a champ to solve this unique problem. To make the appearance of the cameras on the wall less unsightly, I also painted white over the black 12 volt cord from the rear of the cameras to the wall opening, and the black mounting screws. Not a big deal, but it really improves the appearance of the units. I just wish Trendnet made a glass cover for the unit, though.
The Listen feature works, but seems a bit weak to me. I haven't tried the Talk feature, but it requires an attached powered speaker, and I don't see enough value in it for me to make that investment in time and money to set it up.
UPDATE 1/4/11 - After over a year of zero problems keeping my cameras up and running on wireless connections, and NO disconnects, I replaced my Belkin n+ Router with a new Linksys E3000 a few days ago. Since that changeover, I am now up to my ears in disconnects on both of my cameras. I've been trying everything I can think of on the new router configuration, but nothing has improved it so far. I don't think signal strength is an issue, as one of the cameras is within 12 feet, or so, of the router. I'm toying with using the old Belkin as an access point if I can't resolve the connection problem between the Linksys and the Trendnets.
Customer Review: Read the instructions BEFORE you call technical support!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have spent many hours trying to get this camera to work with my Buffalo Wireless Router. I've talked to tech support twice, for a total of 5 hours. Each person had a heavy accent so bad that most of the time, I had to ask them to repeat what they said. Other times, I had to ask if they heard me. Tech support gets one star, from me.
I was at the point of considering buying a Trendnet router, then I decided to read the instructions. First, my excuse: I have a long career and even more experience in electronics. Every good engineer, reads the instructions last! Three minutes of reading the CD-ROM instructions and the camera was working wirelessly, versus five hours of tehcnical support! I prefer to have quick-start instructions as a hard copy.
I will add to this review once I have it mounted. The camera produces a great deal of heat. I would definately use the metal mounting bracket, to help dissipate the heat. I hope this is normal, even though I have many small scale video cameras and none of them produce this much heat. I'm going to leave mine on at least 24 hours before I mount it.
The picture quality is good, considering the camera's use. Don't expect HD or anything near it. Yet, I was impressed by the picture quality.
Update: The heat dissipates well with the bracket. (Still not mounted in the intended room.). Current problem is trying to view the live image on my iPad and iPhone. I have installed several 'remote desktop' type programs all with the same result as just typing in the URL. I get the Trendnet page, where the video image is seen, minus any video from the camera. On the bottom left, all but one 'button' appears.
Apparently, I still haven't learned from my tech. support experience as I called them again! I felt this was a common problem, that
the technical group would be familiar with and would know how to fix it. WRONG! I made three calls with three recommendations. I followed each one, even though I had to purchase two remote applications. All gave the same result: The Trendnet page, but no video. I booted up Safari on my laptop and I had live video even though the same buttons were missing. I still haven't resolved this, but I haven't given up yet!
Latest: Once again, I gave up on tech. support. I found "uCamPro.". This application has Trendnet as one of the web cams it supports. Just enter the URL of the page that you see live video on. Enter your user name and password. The factory setting is "admin" for both. My experiments have been with the camera close to my router and laptop as it is easier to set it up this way.
With "uCamPro," I can monitor the camera on my laptop, iPad and iPhone. There are other apps that will also work with Trendnets web cameras. I hope that my mistakes will make your set-up easier.
Customer Review: Pleased with performance
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this camera to be able to view a second home remotely. I was able to get the intial setup pretty easily and had the camera working locally within a few hours. I have a shop building about 150 feet from the house and my plan was to put it in the window in the shop pointing back at the house with a wireless connection. Again that worked fine locally but I couldn't get access to it over the internet from a remote location. This was very frustrating. I also have a dvr with four cameras hard wired. Two inside and two outside looking away from the house. I have been able to view them remotely with no problem. I am using a DNS service to get the current IP. My thought was that I can access the dvr remotely get the ip and then just change the port to access the camera but this didn't work regardless of the ports I set up and forwarded. This was very frustating for several weeks. Finally I realized that my dvr address 198.162.0.150 was different from my camera address 198.162.1.200. After I realized that I was able to do a more refined search on the internet and finally discovered the solution. The problem was that I had a modem and a separate router. However, the modem also had a dhcp server built in. So I had to turn off the DHCP service on the router and put the router on the same subnet as the modem and then once I did that everything worked. Here is the link to the article in port forwarding
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Now that I have the camera working it works great. I am also able to access the camera on my iphone using the "cam viewer" app. Although it doesn't allow you to access the PTZ functions of the camera. I haven't tried using the microphone or speaker functions yet so don't have an opinion about them.
Update: I have now had the camera for awhile and while I am still pleased with its overall performance, one serious problem with the camera is that it drops the wireless signal. Since this camera is to look over a second home it's value quickly lessons if you can't access it remotely. In the last three weeks it has dropped out twice on me. On the first occaision I was able to have someone reset it for me and then it was good for another 3 or 4 days before it dropped again. Will have to figure out how to deal with that problem.
2nd Update: I was still getting the wireless drop problem and so I bought a ZyXEL WAP3205 access point. This picked up the wireless signal from my wireless router and allowed my to plug my camera in using an ethernet cable thus avoiding the wireless connection on the camera. So far I have gone 10 days and it is still working. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Customer Review: slightly better than typical low-cost IP camera
Summary: 4 Stars
In most ways this is a typical IP camera with many of the annoyances that go along with low-cost IP cameras. These include: software based motion detection that works unreliably, inability to specify a subject line on alert emails, poor user interface for setting scheduled alerts, and requires IE for full functionality.
This camera does distinguish itself from the pack in a few areas, most of which other reviews have described in more depth: wide pan angle, low light, support for Firefox, quick/quiet panning, and WPA/AES WiFi encryption. Additionally I hooked up an external passive IR motion detector (GE AP100PI and a relay to invert the signal) to the GPIO input to achieve reliable motion detection. (This TRENDnet replaced a different brand pan/tilt camera that also had GPIO, but that feature never worked. Some Panasonic cameras have a built-in IR hardware motion detector. All IP cameras should have that feature.)
I have one of these cameras installed in a remote location where it needs to operate unattended for many months at a time. After an initial short tryout period, the camera went offline after a few weeks. I don't know if it crashed or just lost its WiFi connection. I've since attached the camera's power supply to a timer so it gets power cycled once a week to force a periodic reboot. This has been working reliably for about a month so far. One major problem is that the camera resets its pan/tilt position after powering up, and I need it to maintain a specific position. The prior p/t camera I had stored its position and after doing its power up calibration returned to the last set position.
This camera typically sells for $100+ more than lesser known models with a similar feature set. I don't think it is worth that much of a premium, but is a fair deal when it is on sale.
The UI for setting scheduled alerts (i.e. email me a snapshot every 12 hours) is a pain to get to work correctly. You typically end up getting a bunch of snapshots sent instead of one. I ended up using code running on another computer to retrieve images at the desired interval. This also let me set the subject line as desired.
Lastly, after a firmware upgrade, the user interface has lost the pan/tilt controls. I noticed this just before leaving the remote location, and after reloading the camera's configuration, the problem seemed to be fixed, but it later returned. The only advice TRENDnet has been able to offer so far is to do a hard reset on the camera. Something I can't do remotely.
Customer Review: Great for the money...but could use a couple of tweaks....
Summary: 4 Stars
Prior to this I owned the BL-C131A Panasonic wireless cam, which worked great for 2 years, then suddenly didn't work wirelessly anymore. I decided to try the Trendnet TV-IP422W because of the very good reviews I read and also the fact that it has night vision and 2-way audio. Neither of these features were offered on the Panasonic.
The IP422W is a little difficult to set up. As with most products these days, the owners manual is a bit lacking. Luckily I had the experience with the Panasonic camera and wireless set up was very similar. Additionally, one of the prior reviews for this cam gave very good instruction on setting up wireless connection using static ip, which is what I had to do(Verizon FIOS router).
The image is very good with the IP422W, and the night vision in a completely dark room is amazing. Everything is black and white in night vision mode, but still amazing. The ONLY problem with the night mode is that you can't turn it off. When the light level drops to a certain point, the IP422W uses it's night imagery and sometimes it slightly obscures visibility in a room with weak lighting. This is not a problem most of the time, but it would be great if the night mode had an on/off switch.
Another nice feature is the 330 degree rotation. The Panasonic cam could only do about 180 degrees. And the 2-way audio works well (you need to connect computer speakers to the IP422W), but you must click on and off the talk and listen button so you and the person on the other end don't get the delayed feedback. I don't think this is a major issue either, but something to point out. One other thing the Panasonic cam had but not the IP422W is a DISABLE button on the front of cam that you could turn off at night for privacy, and turn ON remotely if you are administrator. This camera can only be turned off by unplugging it.
Overall I am very happy with this cam, but I think the low light images are better on the Panasonic cam, and microphone on IP422W is not as sensitive as the Panasonic cam. I used to be able to hear someone leaving a message on my answering machine at home, and clearly hear the song on the radio in the background at home as well. Now I can hear something, but cannot decipher a phone message or identify song now. If someone is speaking, however, that is always clear enough to understand. For the money ($199), I think this is a very good wireless IP cam.