Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11 | List Price: $299.00
Discount Price: Too low to display
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Brand: Panasonic
Binding: Electronics
Warranty: 1 year warranty
Features: - See There When You Can't Be There
- Control the Camera Remotely
- Sensor Recording
An almost perfect wireless web cam [Posted on 2008-09-08]
I got the Panasonic BL-C131A to be able to set up a streaming video feed from home that would allow me to watch and show the progress on a construction project. The wired network setup was a breeze. I was able to control the camera over the web in 5 minutes or less. The wireless setup was a different story. I tried about everything I could think of (in addition to what was in the documentation). After a few hours, I did get it working, but I am still not sure what made it happen. Perhaps the camera was snooping on my internet connection and saw I was searching Amazon to figure out how to return it. It was about at that time that the status light turned green and the wireless connection was operational.
Now that it is configured, the camera works quite well on a 802.11b/g network, connected through a Linksys wireless router and Comcast high-speed internet connection. If you log in as a privileged user of the camera, you get full-motion video. A guest user has to settle for a lower rate, but for both the picture quality is high. You can allow the guest user to have as much or as little control over the camera as you want, including pan/tilt, white balance, position presets, access to the audio, etc.
If you have a vacation home, a nanny, a pet, or something else you want to watch while you're away, this is a compact wireless unit to do it with. Now, if it only had audio output or a output relay that could control something, you could have real fun with the people you were watching.
Set up with Airport Extreme [Posted on 2008-09-14]
Great product but difficult to set up with Airport Extreme. The good news is that Panasonic has the best technical support line I have experienced. Low wait time and very helpful with a good, patient attitude.
Wow [Posted on 2008-09-15]
I'm very pleased with this camera. I did a lot of research for the best camera to serve as a baby monitor and decided to go with this one per reviews. The quality is the best in the price range, the setup was an absolute breeze, and the features are many. Not quite good enough to see the baby breathing or anything, but good for other viewing. I may still need to get an audio monitor that can be carried around the house. Even the more complex aspects of setup are well documented and easy to understand. I'm able to get streaming video on XP, OSX, and an iphone without any issues. I was even able to give extended family access (via the cool, free web server) in a matter of minutes.
Doesn't work if there is a firewall on the computer [Posted on 2008-09-15]
Overall, this camera is a good buy. We had tried a Linksys camera before and everything everyone says about Linksys is true. Bad idea. This panasonic camera was easy to set up, about 2 hours with a call to technical support. Techinical support is excellent by the way. The only downside to this camera is a little bit of false advertising: it says you can access it from anywhere in the world. There are many computers I have not been able to access it from due to some type of firewall. It seems like it only works on personal computers, not public computers like at the public library or at work.
Nice Webcam for Mac [Posted on 2008-09-27]
Nice product, but the documentation could be a little better for a Mac. Once I found that the default IP address was 192.168.0.253 I was able to get into the unit and configure all the options I wanted. So you can basically toss the diskette they send since is PC only. In general the documentation is useless but who reads that stuff mostly anyway. Got it configured to do wireless communications with my Apple Airport nicely. Haven't set up a DDNS yet, but that will be next. The triggers are a little odd, not sure I understand them but I'm sure I'll figure them out. The main thing is it works with Safari over the Internet. I'm a happy camper.
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