victorb

I have a outdoor IP Camp model: FI8903W. It worked great when I first got it but gave me too many false alarms, so I took it down (after one month of use) and stored it for a year. Now I need it again for a different site, so I got it out again. I hooked it up to my router with the Ethernet cable to set it up, but it is not showing up for some reason. I have tried everything. I swapped the power source, changed the Ethernet cable, tried a different router, hooked it directly to my computer with the ethernet cable. I have tried several IP scan tools and even logged into the router and checked the DHCP client table. It is not showing up anywhere. I know the camera is on because I can see the IR lights glowing. The green and yellow lights on the camera ethernet connector also light up when I plug the ethernet cable in. I have pushed the reset button many times too. I have no idea what it could be. The camera was working fine when I stored it. Can anyone please help me!!!

I need an outdoor Pan/Tilt wifi IP camera with with alarm inputs, so I can wire a door sensor to it. I am looking at spending around $200 give or take a little. VGA quality video is okay if that is the best I can get for this amount. Can anyone recommend any cameras that fit my needs?

Okay. Just an update here. The camera has been working flawlessly for a couple months now. I could not be happier with it. I get zero false positives. Response time is mere seconds and I can easily access it and control it from my smartphone. Happy camper!

Okay. I got the camera up and running. It works very good. The door sensor triggering system works flawlessly. I am so pleased with it. The camera itself it quite impressive. The video quality is better then I expected at this price range. The web UI is so far superior to the web UI of foscams it is not even funny. It is very fast and has not locked up once. The Web UI does offer presets for PTZ, so I don't have to worry about dedicated software. I have the camera setup to send me an email when the alarm is triggered via the door sensor and I have the K9 email app on my smartphone to receive those emails via Push with the IMAP protocol. So far this system has operated flawlessly and the time delay between the trigger and me receiving the email on my smartphone is only about 3 seconds. All in all I am very pleased. There a couple of thing that I don't like, but nothing too serious. The one thing that I don't like is that the camera cannot come up to a horizontal plane. At it's highest position vertically it is pointed at about a 5 degree down slop from the horizontal plane. I have the camera mounted at about 7 feet high in front of the door. From this height I can see only about 200 feet out from the camera. Of course out at 200 feet you can only see peoples feet. So the farther you want to see out with this camera, the higher you have to lift it up. This is not too bad my purposes, but for other people it might be a deal killer. The other thing is that you cannot set the quantity of pictures to take at each alarm trigger or the time delay between triggers. It takes one picture for each trigger on a 30 second time delay. I also could find no way to set it to take video on alarm trigger. But aside from these things, the camera works quite well and I would recommend it to anyone look for a cheap outdoor solution.

wow. thanks. I ordered the ones on ebay.

I am wondering if anyone can tell me what type of connector I need to connect to this I/O Terminal on a wireless security camera?

The picture I posted shows the terminals. They are neither screw down or push in. The camera is a generic one I order on ebay (see picture), but I have seen many Wireless IP cameras with the same type of I/O Terminal. I just can't find the type of connector that I need to connect to them. \

Yes. I will using this camera with a magnetic door sensor as the alarm trigger. "Wireless" refers to how it connects to a network, it does not mean the camera is totally without wires.

I bought it off Amazon.com. Here is the link. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009SUF08/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I bought an outdoor wireless security camera with I/O connections. I also have a magnetic door sensor. I want to wire the door connector to the camera so that the camera will take a picture each time the door is opned. Can anyone help me with how to wire this. I have looked everywwhere and I cannot find instructions on how to do this. Hre are some pictures.

Never mind. I played around with it enough to figure it out. Pins 3 & 4 on the I/O bus were the right ones and COM and either NC or NO worked on the sensor. The NC connection is for an alarm trigger on Close and NO is for an Alarm trigger on Open. I wrote the instructions for the Sensor in a single sentence. You would think the manufacturer could send along a little note to tell you that. Geez! Now I just need to find out what type of female pin connectors that fit the I/O bus on the camera. Any Ideas?

I bought a generic Wireless IP cam from Hong Kong. The tag on the side say it is a Plug and Play IP Camera, Model: IP935FW. It works fine and everything but the web UI is lacking some features I need. The main features I would like is to be able to set how many pictures it takes when the alarm is tripped, the interval between each picture and the time before the alarm resets. Right now the camera takes a single picture after each alarm trip and the alarm resets after 30 seconds. It offers no way to adjust these settings. I would like to set it to take 3 pictures 3 seconds apart at each alarm trip and to reset after 1 minute. In my searching I looked at hundreds of cameras that were from different brands, but all appeared to be identical externally. I am just wondering if it would be possible to load a different web UI on this camera. I know this is a very technical question and there a lot of questions that need to be answered before I could attempt something like this, but I am just wondering if anyone out there has tried or done this and if it is possible?

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I have heard that some cameras support triggering via a door sensor, like a magnetic sensor you would use for a security alarm. I have a situation where I need to take a picture of everybody that goes in and out of an exterior door of a house. I have tried two outdoor cameras with motion detection, but the changes in lighting conditions cause so many false alarms it's incredible , and the camera still misses 50% of the people going in and out of the door. Motion detection is totally and completely useless. If there are cameras that support triggering via a door sensor, what is the technological name of this feature? I have done countless google searches for, "Security Camera with door sensor triggering" and have come up empty. There must be a technical name for this feature and I am using the wrong terminology or something. I need some help here, this is actually a very serious situation that I need to take care of asap. Thanks.

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What do you mean by install properly? Not sure what you mean.

I got the software to run in compatibility mode. It is really bare bones. Offers no setting adjustments or advanced features. You can use to view the camera feed and move it around and that is it. The web interface is much more functional.

Okay. I got the camera in. I seems to work fine. Larger then I expected. The web interface is much better then Foscams for sure. Set up was a synch. No instruction manual, but I don't need one. I have not tried it with the magnetic door sensor yet; it is is on order. Quality seems decent, but time will tell. I just have it hanging off a shelf in my house right now to get it all set up and working before I make the 150 mile trip to install it. I have some questions. 1. What is a good windows software program I can use to remotely access control this camera? Nothing too expense (free if possible). It came with a generic program called, "Device Client" but I cannot get it to run. It installs but will not run. I want a program that I will be able to program the camera to a preset location and have it automatically return to that location if I move it to follow an activity and forget to move it back to the right location. 2. What is a good android app? 3. The camera did not come with a dedicated DDNS Service like Foscams do (myfoscam.org). What is the best way to set this camera up for a DDNS service?

Well, after days of searching, I finally found a camera with the specs I was looking for. I had to order it from Hong Kong because for some unexplicable reason they do not exist in the US. It is a gamble I know, but I hope it turns out okay. If anyone is interested in knowing the outcome, I will post the results. Here is the camera. http://www.ebay.com/itm/HD-720p-Wireless-Wifi-Outdoor-Audio-IP-Camera-Plug-Play-3x-Optical-Zoom-IR-CUT-/201040613493?pt=US_Security_Cameras&hash=item2ecef45075

Well, I took the gamble and ordered the one from Hong Kong. I did actually find another outdoor PT camera here in the US that had alarm inputs (Apexis APM-J901-Z-WS ), but it did not have IR for nightvision, it was only a vga (not the reason I did not get it) and it had pretty bad reviews (2 out of five stars), plus it was more expensive. It was only a $5 upgrade fee for expedited shipping, so hopefully it will not take three weeks to get it. I will let you know how it turns out.

Thanks. I agree with the points you mentioned. It's a gamble. I have ordered stuff from Hong Kong before. It's always been good, but thos could a big hit if it turns out to be bad. The one thing it showes is that a low cost outdoor PT camera with alarm inputs does exist. I will look to see if I can find ine the US a little longer before ordering that one from hong kong.

Hi everyone. I am hoping that someone on here can help me. What I am looking for is an outdoor pan/tilt camera that can be setup to work with a door sensor to trigger it to take a picture and send it. I have spent hours looking and I can't find one. I have heard that there is such a thing, but I can find a camera that says whether it will or not in it's specifications. Can some here help me? Thanks.

thanks. that is a great find. I think it might be worth the gamble. I spent hours searching ebay and did not find it.

Right now I am using two Foscam FI8903W units. They work just fine for taking pictures, remote monitoring, notification and video quality. obviously they stink at motion detection, but they work well in every respect. I have not had a problem with over wifi or sending me notifications . If I knew more electronics I would try to solder into tje circuit board to attach a door sensor and use one camera as a door monitor and then buy another pt camera for tracking.

I have talked with a lot of people about motion detection and they have all told me that even $2000 cameras still have problem with false positives when it comes to motion detection. So any form of reliance of motion detection is off the table as far as I am concerned. A camera that can be triggered via a door sensor will be 100%, so why would I even consider anything that would be less then that. I agree that wifi can be untrustworthy in some case, but In my case it has never failed me. If it becomes a problem the solution would be to use the existing power source as the Ethernet through the use of a powerline product, instead of running a whole new Ethernet line. I currently have two wide angle camera installed in a crisscross pattern and they do not give me complete coverage of the area I need to see. Just for conversation sake. What exactly is PIR?