Cisco-Linksys WVC54GCA Webcam 640x480 802.11G Wireless Internet Home Monitoring Camera by CISCO SYSTEMS - ENTERPRISE
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Digital camera reviews of Cisco-Linksys WVC54GCA Webcam 640x480 802.11G Wireless Internet Home Monitoring Camera
Digital camera Review: Excellent Webcam !!
Summary: 5 Stars
This webcam rocks! Bought it to remote monitor my home while away on vacation and did not want to leave a PC on. Set it up on home wireless network, opened up port 1024, gave it a static IP address (to assure camera did not lose connection to wireless network), plugged it in, and voila, remote monitoring.
It performed steady as a rock, for weeks on end. I am not using the S/W that came with the camera to monitor it, but rather always accessing it from the web using ip:1024 (no need for paid DNS service). I did not need or use any special features like recording video or motion sensing. I did use the feature to set up a guest account for my friends, so everyone could keep an eye on things as well as the log to see how many times the camera was accessed, when, and by whom. Camera resolution is excellent. I had it pointed at a digital thermometer (2 to 3 feet away) and had no trouble with resolution.
I highly recommend this camera!
Digital camera Review: Excellent for mac
Summary: 5 Stars
After lots of research over the web, I decided to buy this camera for my surveillance system at home.
I own a Mac, decision was not easy, because my restrictions...seems that to PC is much easier...anyhow, my requirements are:
Need to be wireless
Support MPEG
Color Camera
Compatible with iMac (securityspy software)
Finally I bought four of them...product is excellent for my needs. It is not as expensive as AXIS that starts at 200 and up... for 100 is definately the cameras I was looking for.
I am planning on buying two more cameras!
Digital camera Review: Fails after 3 days, then needs physical reset
Summary: 1 Stars
I was really happy with this camera. It is a good size, nice design, easy to setup.
But, then after leaving it plugged into the network and unattended for a few days, it shut off. It does not like to be powered up for more than a couple of days, and the only way to reset it is to unplug the power, and plug it back in again.
I have tried wired and wireless connections, but no luck.
It's not worth your money unless you don't mind resetting it's power every day or so.
Digital camera Review: Flawed on many levels
Summary: 2 Stars
Where to begin?
Well, the camera works, but thats about all I can say positively.
Let's start with the hardware. The unit is a nice design with no external antenna, but is a little on the big side. It has some flexible mounting options, though the backside mount has positioning limitations because of the power and network connections.
The camera is pretty basic in capabilities. Even with 640x480, the compression is so high that smaller objects in the image are hard to discern, and this was after rasing the image quality to the highest.
Network setup was pretty straight forward, and it was easy to get on my internal network. As other reviewers have stated, it takes some basic knowledge to expose this camera outside your local network. One flaw impacting the camera I received, is it loses wireless connectivity on a regular basis that requires 'rebooting' the device by disconnecting power. Security settings seemed to have no impact on this behavior.
The real stinker in this solution is the software.
First and foremost, the signing certificate for the ActiveX control expired in June, basically rendering camera viewing through a browser impossible...unless you want to override your Browser security settings. It would be extremely simple for Linksys to resign the control with a new cert and publish a firmware update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Really bad form Linksys.
Next, the actual software you install on your desktop for managing the camera(s) has a terrible UI and even crashed a couple of times. It wants to 'rediscover' all your devices every single time you go into Setup, and when you exit, it simply minimizes to the tray without informing you of this action. In fact, the only way to close the application completely is to let it minimize to the tray, then right click and choose exit. The other problem seems to be that it 'forgets' your devices requiring to set them back up. This occurred twice in less than 48 hours.
So, I can't recommend this product for level of use and for those that said it was okay for a $100 solution, I have to completely disagree.
Digital camera Review: Frustrating Cisco Customer Service
Summary: 1 Stars
Re: Cisco-Linksys Wireless-N Internet Home Monitoring Camera
I purchased this camera a month ago and spend endless hours testing its motion sensor feature. Despite wonderful help from the "Cisco Home Community" [...] in their forum I was never able to get it to work properly. It triggered alarms by sending out emails and uploading clips to my server every 5 minutes even though there was no movement to detect.
Setting it up to work with mail server and ftp server can be a bit challenging for some although it wasn't an issue for me since that is my job. The software is Windows only but setting up the camera is also possible with a web browser from a Mac with some limitations (sensor zones can only be set with Internet Explorer). As mentioned above, the Cisco Home Community forum is very helpful to resolve technical issues.
Since my issues couldn't be resolved with all my testing and the help from the forum I called Cisco technical support. After 2.5 hours on the phone with them, their lab left a message on my answering machine that they had determined that the camera was faulty. I still have that message on my answering machine.
When I called back and they found out that the camera was still in warranty, they all of a sudden changed their mind and told me that I couldn't exchange the camera - without giving me any reasons for this sudden change of heart. Asking for a supervisor, I was told that someone would call me back. I never got the call back...
I will look for other cameras and will obviously try to avoid products from Cisco in the future. It's really quite sad how giants like Cisco can treat their customers. It sure has turned into an expensive camera - for Cisco and for me - when you consider all the lost hours.