Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11 by Panasonic
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Digital camera reviews of Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11
Digital camera Review: Almost perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
I got 3 of these as nanny-cams and they're working out fairly well in that regard. The video quality isn't exactly awesome but then no camera in this price range will give you much better. For monitoring purposes, it's sufficient. The audio is a nice feature. The web interface is reasonably intuitive and gives you lots of options. The one feature I wish this had was mp4 recording to a remote source. this camera touts its mpeg4 video abilities but it's only usable in 'live' mode. If you want to record for later review, it will have to be mjpeg - and without sound.
If this camera could record to some sort of 'video with audio' format, it would get 5 stars from me - if you don't care about recording for later review, it's just about perfect.
Digital camera Review: Almost useful
Summary: 3 Stars
This camera has decent quality components for adequate image quality, and capable motion sensing that includes versatile scheduling options, but it is hobbled with several usability omissions.
While it includes the ability to schedule motion detection, which the Linksys WVC200 sorely lacks, and does allow ftp transfers of video when triggered, it surprisingly omits an option to email a video file, only allowing email of a single image, (not even several images per email). That falls short of the WVC200, which can email an MPEG-4 clip when triggered. Another seemingly obvious oversight is the inability to turn off all activity lights. While there's an option to turn off the power light, it completely ignores control of the light that blinks when it is supposed to inconspicuously detect motion.
As another reviewer wrote, the author of the manual is clearly not a native English speaker, which prompts the question of why a company the size of Panasonic couldn't run it by anyone state side, who would have immediately caught things like: "Encryption is a help to avoid being read the data within wireless LAN by others." and more. Finally the bundled software only includes a Web based monitor, (which seems to require repeated installations of the ActiveX applets for MPEG-4 and MJPEG players), while the Linksys supplies a fully functional desktop monitor application, with recording schedules and archive playback, (but no scheduled motion detection), although only for a PC.
Non-PC users might find this among their better options as it does function, (without audio), in non-IE browsers, including Safari, and Panasonic has far better tech support than Linksys, but PC users might find a better interface in the Linksys.
Digital camera Review: Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the camera was to setup. I am still trying to figure out all the options for Internet access, but the options used so far have been great. There is a wide range of pan and tilt. The zoom is electronic. So the zoomed images are pretty fuzzy.
After several months of use, I feel I need to mention some problems. This camera can provide direct Internet access without having to go through a local computer. But it eventually loses Internet access. I can only remotely keep an eye on things because I have a local computer that I can remotely access. I can use that to make a local network connection to restore camera Internet functions. When a power outage went beyond battery backup up time for the remote computer, all was lost until I returned to the site to get things going again.
Digital camera Review: An almost perfect wireless web cam
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Digital camera Review: An excellent wireless camera
Summary: 5 Stars
This camera is excellent. I can log onto it from my iPhone and see what's going on at the house while I'm away. It has a long electrical cord, which makes it easy to place wherever it is needed. To move it, just unplug it and plug it into the new location.
The software can also be set to automatically upload pictures to a web site at a periodic interval.
The only downside about this camera is that it takes a bit of figuring out. The manual is not very useful, particularly with regards to the software, but once you get it set up there's no maintenance to be done.