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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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TRENDnet SecurView Wireless Day/Night Pan/Tilt/Zoom Internet Surveillance Camera TV-IP422W (White)
Customer Review: Not bad for under $200
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this to goof off with and also as a potential baby monitor.
Right now it is set up as surveillance for the front of my house and does an okay job looking out the window and detecting motion. I use it with a Synology DS210j and Surveillance Station and get emails with motion and also can get texts. It is set up to record these events and I can log in and watch them or archive.
VIDEO: I played around with the settings and found that outdoor mode works nicely in most light situations. Maybe when it is pointed inside I will change that to 60Hz.
FREEZE UP: I had the same problem some others have had with it locking up after about 10 days. I had been getting emails notifying me of motion detected (through the Synology) and they just stopped. I gave it a power cycle and it was back in business but this could be an issue if you can't power cycle over your network and have this thing at a vacation home or somewhere remote.
AUDIO: I could hear through it but could not figure out how to talk back out of it. Maybe I need a remote speaker or something but I thought that two-way was standard. I might just be doing it wrong but don't care about this feature very much.
I think for the price, despite a few negatives listed below, it is a good value and a nice entry-intermediate level IP camera.
Pros:
Easy set up. 20 mins from out of box to setup complete.
Works with Synology NAS
Motion detection has 2 zones and can be calibrated
Can be redirected remotely
Comes with mounting bracket for wall/ceiling
Cons:
Can't figure out how to shut off LED lights at night. I have outdoor lighting that is sufficient and the LEDs just get in the way.
Is there an on/off switch that can be triggered remotely? I didn't see an option for that or for scheduling
Picture quality is a little iffy for 2011...no 720p? Come on man.
Customer Review: 2nd Round.. Works great.
Summary: 4 Stars
Goals:
1) So my family can see the baby sleep or play.
2) Watch my nanny with the baby through my phone during the work day.
3) 2 way audio to explain what I'd like to see done with nanny.
4) pan/tilt anywhere in the room.
Pros:
1) After returning the initial camera b/c it was defective, the 2nd one works great!
2) If at all possible, ORDER IT DIRECTLY FROM TRENDNET OVER AMAZON! It's cheaper then most companies selling the same item and you'll have the newer version with the updated software. This was a major reason why the other camera didn't work.
3) The ability to view anywhere. On my computer and phone.
4) The best app I found was 9.99. It's called "IP Cam View." You can zoom,listen,etc. Works great for this type of camera.
5) The 800 number!!! This is the best by far. Several companies don't even offer 24/7 service. These guys are good. A little tough to speak english but you can understand perfectly. DON'T HOOK UP ANYTHING WITHOUT CALLING THEM. CALL THEM FIRST AND HAVE THEM WALK YOU THROUGH IT. saves a big headache later.
Cons:
1) I'm having a problem saying this is a con but I have too. Hooking up any wireless web cam is not easy. Even with the 800 number helping me, it still took a couple hours.
2) Remember you still have to contact your router company to get a few things so it works wirelessly unless you already know the ins and outs of your router.
3) There should be a trendnet app for viewing. Instead I have to use a 3rd party to view. But that's ok.
4) it promotes 2way audio. This is true but you have to attach a mic to both ends if you want this to work. You can listen but can't speak unless you do that.
Bottom Line:
Don't buy this camera from anyone other then Trendnet. They'll have all the updates on there cameras that other companies can't supply. Works as promised and you'll be happy with it.
Customer Review: Works well, setup instructions are ...
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this WebCAM as a way of keeping an eye on my dog. My dog is Bloodhound and everything that you've probably heard about their sensitive noses is completely true and worse! Her nose gets into everything so I needed a way 'catching her in the act' so that I could correct the behavior.
The WebCAM is quite small and the web based configuration is simple. However, if you're not a computer guru who knows all of the ins and outs to setting up your DSL router and webCAM, good luck. I consider myself very tech savvy and I struggled with getting the router and camera to work together for quite some time. Forget about the instructions that come with the camera, they are almost worthless.
Here's a tip that I found on a third party web site almost as an afterthought. If you want to use the "Speaker Out" feature, you have to supply the speaker! Nowhere does TrendNet give you this little gem of information, or at least nowhere that I could find it.
The camera "looks up" much further than it "looks down." So if you mount the camera high, (I mounted mine near the ceiling) you may need to mount it with a little down angle so that you can increase the field of view below the camera. I mounted mine so that it looks straight down giving me the widest field of view possible. Note that if you do this, the image will "rotate" as you pan the camera from side to side.
The wireless works very well, again using the web based setup is a snap to setting up the wireless. It has a lot of different security features that works with a wide range of Access Points.
The zoom is a joke. It's nothing more than like zooming in on a photo using your favorite picture viewer / editor. Worthless in my opinion.
All in all, I like the camera a lot for what I'm using it for, essentially a security camera. I'm considering purchasing a second one for my downstairs.
Customer Review: Very good net cam for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this internet camera for my sister and my daughter to monitor their chicken coop while away from home. For this purpose I needed:
* Night vision capability
* 2-way audio
* Pan, tilt, zoom
* Wireless LAN connection
* Internet accessible
This is one of the few cameras that has all these capabilities and the only one that I found anywhere near this price point. A key feature of this camera is its built-in web server, so you can connect to it from anywhere in the world over the internet using a web browser. There is no need to connect the camera to a host computer. Once connected, manipulating the camera is simple point-and-click.
Setup on a home network requires some knowledge of TCP/IP configuration, wireless setup, and port forwarding, but is not complicated for someone with these skills.
I also connected a Hawking hi-gain wireless antenna to the camera and the home's wireless router. You simply replace the stock antennas with the hi-gain antennas. This greatly improved connectivity.
There are a few downsides:
1. Picture quality in low/no light is very good, considering. But the quality is not great under good lighting conditions. Perhaps it's a tradeoff between night vision and day vision, but one that I'm willing to make to get the night vision capability.
2. The zoom is digital, not optical. This means that a 2x or 3x zoom is just the normal image made bigger on your screen. Since the normal image is fairly low VGA resolution, blowing it up only makes it look bigger and blockier and somewhat useless. An optical zoom would be far better, but try finding that (along with tilt and pan) in camera for less than $600.
3. The built-in speaker is very weak.
So it's not perfect, but it is quite good and unbeatable for the money. 4 stars.
Customer Review: When its working, its good.
Summary: 3 Stars
Had it for a couple of days and have it all set up, here are my obsevations:
1. Pretty Easy to get going out of the box. Had it streaming video off the wired connection within 10 minutes. Wireless went pretty well, too. (using Windows Vista 64-bit)
2. Picture quality is surveillance-cam quality, not web-cam quality, as might be expected. Wish it were better, but it will do.
3. I figured out how to get it to stream over the internet with a little searching. Here is the short version of what you need: A) a router set up with a Dynamic DNS service (free ones are available) B) Forward the (static) local IP address of your camera through your router as another port. Now you can connect to it over the Internet at no cost.
4. The Chrome web browser does not let me move the camera, or zoom in, or access somne other features. MS Internet Explorer shows all of the features.
Overall, I'm very satisified w/the camera. The only thing that costs it a star is the picture quality. I was hoping for better.
UPDATE: The camera has locked up and failed completely. As of 2 weeks ago, the camera would not boot itself up when powered up. I cannot connect to the camera over my local network at all. Looks like a dead unit. I've contacted TRENDnet customer support and I'm in the process of sending it back to be replaced. On some other review websites, it seems others have had some problems with the machine dying on them (looks like high infant mortality rate). When it's working, it's pretty cool, but we'll see how the reliability is with this next one. Downgraded to 2 stars for now.
UPDATE 2: Replacement camera has been working mighty fine. Customer support wasn't too painful, took about 4-6 weeks to get a replacement direct from TRENDnet. Upgraded back to 3 stars since the second one is working well.