yakky

I had a couple of the trendnet IP cameras, they are worthless in the dark unless you go with the IR models, which are much more expensive. Check out Foscams, there is a pretty good following on them and some cool mods you can do like change lenses. Also the Panasonic "Pet Cam" is one heck of a great camera for the price. Its not POE but you can rig it to be.

Google dirb and wfuzz. Both are tools that can hammer away at a webserver and guess URLs by bruteforce. I've combed my Nightowl this way.

If you can get an SDK manual from the mfg, that's definitely the way to go. I scrounged one up for my Foscam and it was a huge help.

I'm in the same boat as you, I've got a Nightowl and I'm looking to do the same. Several of the computers I use either don't support the web browser plugins or I don't have admin on them to install it.

I think your best bet is to use a proxy server to snoop the traffic or do some packet sniffing.

So I've been reading quite a bit here, and I've seen various cameras mentioned. It seems like the CNB VCM-24VFH is the bang for the buck leader overall, but I'm curious if there is an outdoor sub $100 camera that is worth considering? I've seen the QVIS Eye 35 mentioned quite a few times and some samples posted. Thoughts?