Language Switcher
The new IP Camera
- Details
For the last 4 years my driveway was supervised with an old IP cam with a VGA sensor. I bought it on the local ebay, connected and used it ever since. It has, however, been 1 500 days ago!. The time has come to look for something new.
I ended up with a IP cam with a 5 megapixel sensor. 5MP is what my first digital camera had. It is 16 times more than what I have now. It must be an improvement.
Here is what my camera looks like:
The specs say that the camera can record movies with a full 2 592x1 920 resolution at 10 frames per second. It is worth mentioning that a regular Full HD TV accepts a maximum of 1920x1080 pixs. At that resolution (2MP), the camera should be able to record movies at 25 frames per second. Is it all possible?
I bought the camera thinking that if the specification is kept in 50% I would still be far ahead in comparison to what I had at that time. In the package with the camera I received a charger, a hanger and nothing more. After plugging the camera to my home LAN and opening the browser with its IP... I saw a picture, which by far exceeded my expectations.
The picture says more than a 1000 words, so look for yourself. On the left is the image from my old camera. The right one comes from the new device:
 |
 |
The first thing that one can notice is that the lens of the new cam is broader. The photo was taken at 3MP resolution, which is recommended for normal use. One can set it to 5mp, which makes the image even broader, but the corners become covered (see the photo. Warning! 1,1 MB). It is a consequence of the size of the lens itself, which is made for 3MP sensors. It has been described so in the specification so I do not have complains. Especially that the image range, the colors and the details are astonishing.
A few words about the integration. The camera publishes a live stream packed with the H.264 codec. One can paly it with, for example, the VLS player choosing, File->open stream and entering: „rtsp://admin:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.:554/mpeg4” (login: admin and password: 123456 are defaults). The camera publishes the images also via a built-in www server, but it requires installing an ActiveX control, which I do not like to use.
Besides using the "UC" software provided by the produces, one can use iSpy or GeniusVision.
For me, however, the snapshots were most important. Shanpshots are what I use for all my html-based applications. After searching the web I found out that:
At http://192.168.0.123/cgi-bin/snapshot.cgi one can download a scaled-down image at 640x480 resolution.
At http://192.168.0.123/cgi-bin/snapshot.cgi?stream=0 the full image at current maximum resolution is available.
Additionally, if someone is integration-hungry, the camera supports ONVIF, which allows for a remote configuration with the use of, for example, ONVIF Device Manager.
If you have a camera like that, please let me know. I am curious of your experiences.