Panasonic Wireless Network Camera and Pet Cam (BL-C20A)
by Panasonic
Our Price: $299.99
Availability: Usually ships in 6-10 business days
Category: CE
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Digital product summary information
Manufacturer: PanasonicModel: BL-C20A
Color: White
Product features:
- Place anywhere you'd like to keep an eye on things, with no PC required at the location
- View and control from a standard web browser, video display, or compatible cell phone or PDA
- Connect wirelessly with standard 802.11b/g devices, SSID filtering and 40/64/128-bit WEP encryption
- Simple plug-n-play operation
- Built-in heat sensor allows record and/or notify by email when someone enters the room
Digital camera reviews of Panasonic Wireless Network Camera and Pet Cam (BL-C20A)
Digital camera Review: Generally happy with the Panasonic BL-C20A NetCam
Summary: 4 Stars
My wife and I wanted to install a video camera of some sort to monitor the comings and goings at the front and back of the house. Our list of wants was pretty short: We wanted a cam that would email us when there was activity and store images that could be accessed online. After trying some of the cheaper consumer Wireless IP NetCams and been disappointed by them in various ways we decided to try the Panasonic BL-C20A.
The BL-C20A looks like the answer we were looking for. Its low-light performance is pretty good and its a range of notification, image storage and image capture options make it very practical for our purposes. Rather than list the options, I'll just tell you how I set ours up.
After establishing the camera's basic settings by hard-wiring it to our network for a short bit, I switched it over to wireless networking and installed it on the ceiling. The most difficult part of that process was running the 10' long adapter power cable through the ceiling to a spot in a closet where I could install the wall-wort power adapter. Once installed there I found I could get great video of our front door and foyer.
The next step was to set up the camera's "triggers." The BL-C20A can store five different trigger configurations that dictate how and when the camera captures images and what it does with them. Each trigger has an on/off setting (so you can easily activate and deactivate saved settings), a setting for what time of day and days of the week the trigger is active, an option that allows you to capture images at specific intervals or when there is motion in the frame, a set of options that dictates the number, size and frequency of images capture when motion is detected, what to do with the captured images, and an email notification option that lets you know when the camera has detected motion.
Captured images can be stored on the camera's internal web server, emailed to a list of three recipients, or stored on an external FTP server.
I set up three triggers. The first captures two 320x240 pixel images every second there is motion in the frame and stores them on the camera's web server. The camera canstore up to 255 images before it starts deleting older images to make room for new ones.
My second setting sends 4 images taken at one second intervals to my wife and I by email when motion is detected. This has its positive and negative effects. On the plus side, we get real-time notification whenever someone comes in our front door, but since each image is sent in a separate 7K email message a busy foyer can fill up our inbox pretty quickly.
The third trigger stores two 640x480 images each second motion is detected on my off-site FTP server.
We plan to leave the first trigger on at all times. The second two triggers we'll turn on when we're away on vacation.
The biggest downside of the BL-C20A is it supports WEP wireless security protocol but not the more secure WPA encryption that is the current industry standard. Supporting WEP is better than nothing, but it is easily hacked. (There are downloadable toolkits that can do it in minutes, so I set the cam up on a separate network that's isolated from our primary LAN.) The frame captures aren't picture perfect. They have all the charm you expect from a security cam video capture and little more, but that's all we needed for our application.
Overall we're happy with this camera and plan to acquire one more so we can easily check on our house when we're away at work or out on vacation.
If you can run Ethernet to your camera location you might look at the wired version of this NetCam, the BL-C1A. Not only is it about $90 cheaper, but since there is no wireless it'll help keep your LAN more secure.
Summary of Panasonic Wireless Network Camera and Pet Cam (BL-C20A)
Wireless Network Camera Automatic Network Configuration, Universal Plug and Play, Set-up Wizard, Remote Pan/Tilt Control, Built in PIR motion detectorHome Security Systems Tools
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