Sharx Security VIPcella-IR SCNC2700 Wifi Wireless b/g/n IP network camera with MicroSD DVR and True Day/Night vision

1st, the setup:It took me less than 30min to get it to work on my local network.About 30 more minutes to set up remotely, with DDNS. Besides, it was the 1st DDNS I ever set up.And I'm just an average computer guy.Conclusion: Easy to set up.Edit:Setting up email server and ftp server was a bit more of a pain, since the format to be used is very strict. It's still doable for average users. But the result is great. The many options give so much control over the camera, such as setting up the number of pictures sent by emails or to the ftp server once motion has been detected. It's also possible to set up a time interval during which one can deactivate the motion detection alarm, to avoid receiving too much emails or pictures.2nd, the camera itself:Produced a very sharp image with just the right luminosity when viewed on my local network.The fps slowed down a bit when viewed on a remote network.The night mode is just great. The infrared LEDs are really bright, which gives an excellent picture in pitch dark.There is also a Moon Light mode, which works best at very low brightness, and improve the picture by increasing the light sensibility, while decrease the FPS. I was told about that feature by the customer service.Conclusion: Does what's it supposed to do, and even better than that.3rd, the customer service:I'm always reluctant to contact CS, but I gave it a shot, and it was so worth it.When I asked questions, the agent always gave me relevant and practical answers, while offering additional tips related to my questions. (Moon Light mode, using an ac power surge to turn off the camera when I was looking for a software-oriented method, and how I could get a IR illuminator pointing at the ceiling to be able to use the night-mode without turning on the red LEDs)Conclusion: highly recommended product!Problem: this is the first ip camera I buy, and I'm afraid I may be disappointed with any model I buy in the future compared to this one.Note:The camera is connected to a pretty slow wifi connection (90kbytes/sc), and remotely accessed from a faster connection (about 500kbytes/sc), which may explain the decrease in fps..

Initially the setup for this camera seemed very straightforward; plug it into an ethernet port, find what IP it gets assigned, and then open it in a browser to configure the wifi settings. Once that was done, however, I ran into a lot of issues trying to use the camera and spent an entire evening trying to get the thing to stay on my network before I realized I had to leave the ethernet unplugged. Even then I had to restart my router before the camera would stay online.The network interface on this camera uses the same MAC address for both the ethernet connection and the wifi. This means that once the wifi is configured, you have to immediately disconnect the ethernet and cannot ever use the ethernet port again without massively confusing your network router. This detail is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation, and I only realized it when I saw the same MAC showing up under both wired and wireless devices on my router.I have yet to be able to connect to anything but the motionjpeg stream, and the camera seems to keep crashing on a regular basis. I will likely be returning it.

After the initial setup this camera worked amazingly. I purchased it originally to use as a fish cam for my fish tank (I know that probably sounds really lame because this is a really expensive camera). Once we realized all of the cool things it could it could do we set it up on the front porch since that's where we get the most activity. You should know that because of the IR lights if you set this up to point THROUGH a window it will not work - the light bounces off the glass and into the lens giving you a terrible white out and making the camera pointless at night. However, if you can mount the camera in such a was as the small ring around the lens to be right up against the glass it will actually block out the light being reflected by the lights and you will be able to see a picture with the night vision. It won't be as clear a picture as if you weren't looking through glass, but it will do the job.The BEST feature about this little camera is that you can set up what portion of the frame you want to trigger the alarm if it detects movement. This is VERY handy because we have it set on our front walkway so every car that would pass in front of the house was setting it off. With some quick adjustments to the motion detection frame and you we no longer get email alarms unless someone actually comes up our walkway, which is awesome.There are a ton of features on this thing, my only disappointment is that sometimes the video playback is glitchy and not smooth, even set at the highest frame rate, which kind of sucks for 300$.

This camera is excellent. I would give it 4.5 stars if I could!Pros:Excellent picture even in the darkGood build qualitySoftware is very flexible (may scare away novice computer users though)Comes in BLACK!Can disable power LED to make it more stealth. This won't help much at night when the IR LEDs are on, but I thought it was a nice touchCan record to MicroSD, send files to FTP/NAS/EmailCons:Schedule not very flexible. You can only set 1 range of recording per day (was hoping for 2+)Have to manually toggle daylight savings. If your not using the recording schedule this would be no big deal. otherwise just a minor inconvenienceI would definitely get this camera. I had the Y-CAM HomeMonitor before this, and had no luck with it. The software was very temperamental after the firmware upgrade and even when I had it working right, the FPS were low compared to this one (Y-CAM didn't even list the specs on it). I might have just got a dud, but like I said even before the firmware upgrade it wasn't that great. slow response overall compared to Sharx