Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) – White NEWEST MODEL (replaces the FI8908W)
Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) – White NEWEST MODEL (replaces the FI8908W)
- Simple to setup, high image & video quality, two-way audio monitoring
- Remote pan/tilt control (pan:300° & tilt:120°), Freely control IR-LED on/off
- Auto IR-LED illumination for night vision (up to 8 meters)
- Remote viewing, record from anywhere anytime, motion detection alert via email or upload image to FTP
- Supports all standard browsers, Wi-Fi compliant (IEEE 802.11b/g), supports WEP & WPA WPA2 Encryption
Replacing the Foscam FI8908W, the FI8918W is this latest camera from Foscam. The FI8918W is a wireless or wired, pan/tilt IP camera solution for indoor use. It combines a high quality digital video camera, remote pan/tilt ability with network connectivity and a powerful web server to bring clear video to your desktop or smartphone from anywhere on your local network or over the Internet. The high quality video image is transmitted with 30fps speed on the LAN/WAN by using MJPEG hardware compression technology. The image resultion is 640 x 480 (300k Pixels). The Foscam FI8918W camera is based on the TCP/IP standard. The control, management and maintenance of the camera is done simply by using your browser to remotely configure and upgrade the firmware. The Foscam FI8918W IP camera can reach up to 8 meters of visibility in absolute darkness with 11 infrared LED’s.
List Price: $ 83.09
Price: $ 83.09
Tenvis Wireless WIFI IP Network Surveillance Security CCTV Camera Mini US Stock
 | US $63.90 End Date: Sunday May-20-2012 11:02:06 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $63.90 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
 | US $129.99 End Date: Sunday May-20-2012 11:35:35 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $129.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
 | US $299.00 End Date: Sunday May-20-2012 11:46:58 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $299.00 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
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A basic pan/tilt IP Cam at an entry level price,
This is a decent IP camera with enough features for most first time users. I was able to configure and use the camera without having to load any of the included software without any trouble, but an average person might have trouble getting every feature working. If you don’t know what DNS or FTP means, you are one of these people.
If you are planning on just sitting this on a window sill and pointing it outside as a 24/7 security camera, think again. It works fine in the daytime, but interior reflections on the window glass make it less useful at night. The IR LEDs reflect back off the window and effectively blind the camera.
Image quality is typical of a low-cost CMOS sensor. Color accuracy and saturation is poor, but adequate for most uses.
It also has several shutter speed settings….a 60hz speed for night/low light, a 50hz speed for medium lighting, and a slow shutter speed for outdoor use. While the camera is able to automatically adjust sensor sensitivity a bit to compensate for changes in lighting, it doesn’t have an automatic shutter speed setting. This means that if you have the shutter speed set on the “Outdoor” setting, it works great on a sunny day, but at night is far too dark to be useful. You’d have to manually switch shutter speeds every day if you were using it as an unattended security camera. Leaving it on 60hz setting and trying to view an outside scene just results in a white video image…the sunlight totally overwhelms the sensor unless you use the “outdoor” setting.
The motion detection feature is excellent. You can have the camera automatically email you a sequence of still photos everytime it detects motion. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked. You can specify up to 5 individual recipients.
It is also capable of uploading the same still images to an FTP server if you wish to archive them for review later. A date/time stamp on the image would have been a nice addition but isn’t a feature.
I did not try the audio features, thus cannot say if they are improved over the old camera. If you are looking to integrate this camera into your DIY home security system, you should purchase the previous model (FI8908W) as this new one doesn’t have the RS485 port anymore.
Bottom line, whether you want to use this camera to monitor an interior room, or an outside scene, it’s a good entry level camera. Just don’t expect it to be able to do both without manually making some adjustments for one or the other.
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|Way more than I expected!,
Where to start…
Well I’ll open with.. I’m IMPRESSED! I opted to get the white version of the FI8918W just because it was cheaper than the black version and was identical other than the color. I was first concerned because I got two camera’s and the first one was “loose” it seemed (camera from the base). The second seems to be identical so this must just be the way these camera’s are. I hooked this up directly to my router as per the instructions and tried to determine a standard ip address without having to use the included software. I wasn’t able to so then used the mini-disc on my windows 7 PC. The computer prompted for reboot which I did before I noticed the icon on the desktop. When it rebooted I double clicked the icon and after a brief moment it displayed the ip address of the camera. Note: I’m also using zone alarm and it requested access to 255.255.255.255:10000, which I allowed and it displayed the camera.
When I double clicked the ip address displayed in the software window I was taken to ie which then I put in the user id: admin and for the PW. I don’t know if I’m just lucky because I’ve had so many lessons with my other IP cameras, but this one was very easy (outside trying to figure out why the wireless config wasn’t working as expected). One of the other things I was really impressed with was the ease of setting up the wireless. I “scanned” for wireless sources, found mine, clicked it and nearly all the fields were prefilled. I only had to input my security key. Now… The issue I had. I’m currently running 4 different cameras, x2 different Linksys camera’s and a trendnet. Those all when setup kept their ip address. This Foscam uses a different one. So after you have it setup I’d recommend re-running their ip software and finding the new ip address after you have removed the cat5 cable. This took me about an hour to figure out.
My camera background:
I started out with x2 Linksys wvc54gca. These were my basis for learning about the IP camera’s, the router work required to open the ports and more especially multiple camera’s on the same router and how to accomplish that. After moving from the lower 48 to Alaska, we wanted a pan tilt zoom (PTZ) camera and opted for the Linksys WVC210. This camera is a very nice unit, but after getting the new Foscam night PTZ camera, I feel like I wasted a significant amount of money on this one unit, when I believe the Foscam FI8918W is easily a better buy. We also have the Trendnet tv-ip422w and compared to this new Foscam camera, the video is absolutely SUBPAR to the Foscam.
While this is a review about the Foscam FI8918W I want the readers to know and appreciate what this camera does. The Linksys WVC54GCA works perfectly in IE and Firefox (Safari as well). The WVC210 will NOT, repeat NOT work with IE. There is an active X that is required and Cisco must have an issue with Microsoft or something because I cannot force my computer to accept the active X. You can ONLY view this in Fire Fox (FF) or Safari (if I remember correctly), but FF is what we use to view it. These Foscam’s work in: IE8, FF and FF on Mac OS-X (Snow Leopard). I haven’t tried Safari, but our needs were met in that realm.
Mobile browsing: Both of the Linksys cam’s were visible on our iPhone/iTouch. We have now ditched the iPhone (junk) and went with the Samsung captivate (android) and had the same experience. The Trendnet and Foscam units were not viewable on either of our phones. This was an initial HUGE issue, but I’ve found that on both the itunes and android app store there is an app (android has a free version, apple doesn’t) called “IP Cam Viewer” by Robert Chou (android lite version works for free and has a banner at the top). If you use this program use “Add IP” in the settings to add your DNS address you established and go from there. This app also allows “swipe to pan” option.. NICE!!
In setting up, I mentioned that I have multiple camera’s. I’ve resorted to using multiple different port’s such as: myipcam,dot,com:1111 and the next is: myipcam,dot,com:1112, and: myipcam,dot,com:1113, etc. You will establish this in your individual camera settings and your router config.
Over all.
I know my setup was based on historical config’s I’ve done with other camera’s so I was aware of some of the pitfalls. But I believe these cameras were the easiest to setup. The camera’s software/firmware is a little “hokey” and could be improved I believe, but It has everything it needs to have (that I could determine) so I can’t fault the firmware (admin) settings/options about that. The actual web GUI (interface) was pretty nice, especially compared to the other camera’s I have. I didn’t try the multiple setup and accessing them through the internet because one of the two cameras we received will be kept a little more “private” and…
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