I’ve being wanting to write a review of these cameras for a while, but felt having nothing nice to say was unfair.
I have a total of three cameras
one Foscam FI9851P WiFi Indoor Mini 720P HD IP Surveillance Camera – White
and
two Foscam C1 Lite 720P Wireless Cube Daytime Baby Monitor IP Camera, Mini Wide Viewing Angle Surveillance Webcam, Wi-Fi Connection, Two Way Audio, Motion
I did not really use these devices until I move on 1st September 2016 I’m going to take this review in stages so as to cover all part!
Setup
I’ve worked in IT for 15 years, set up networking for Portable X-Ray Machines, CT’s, MRI Machines, Countless Computers, Door Security, CCTV Systems – Yet these cameras took me two days.
There is a QR Code on the back that you scan with the iPhone app, it the requires you to enter your wireless code. Now typing a random string on an iPhone is not my idea of fun! moreover, the app doesn’t remember it so you need to type it in for each camera.
They do not support 5 GHz so you better have a stable 2.5GHz Network.
GUI
The GUI has been designed by a 2 year old with a crayon.
Firstly the GUI is sized wrong the setting part are in frames! and don’t fit on the screen.
Secondly once setup in the app you need to connect. oh but you can’t as the camera don’t register with DNS, so you need the IP. You look in the app, nothing not a thing. so you ask you router.
you connect but can’t as the administration page requires the cam plugin that only supported on Windows and MacOS.
You dig out your old MacBook, You find that again Chrome on Mac is not supported. You revert to Safari. Enter the username/password and are randomly rejected. You enter again and this time you’re allowed in.
The settings are in no logical order. They appear in groups down the left side but this makes it hard to remember what you’ve changed. You setup
NTP, FTP, Video recording and snapshots.
In the alarms you find a sensitivity select box. but there is no help with regards to sensitive to what, it more or less sensitive.
You set up one camera, but there is no copy config on option.
You can export the configuration but this exports the username/password, not exactly security best practice. There is no configuration audit utility, to check all cameras have the same basic config.
Power Cut
Now sometime after setup, there must have been a Power Cut because the camera lost everything apart from their wireless config.
FTP
I setup FTP to my laptop. Firstly the camera upload to a individual folder per-camera so the FTP root can be the same. Secondly the cameras don’t upload to the defined camera name but instead to random string (The MAC Address) which make remembering each camera difficult!
Thirdly the upload video has no sound!
Fourthly (this is big) both the C1-Lite cameras have an 8Gb Micro-SD Card. Yesterday my laptop need to reboot. During the reboot I got an alarm on my iPhone that the one of the cameras detected noise. As per my setting a video should have been uploaded to my FTP. Now as my laptop was rebooting FTP was down.
You would think it would notice and store the video on the SD Card and maybe upload to FTP later or at least notify me. But no, no recording was made.
My overall opinion as an IT Engineer these are a toy, not a security system! The word Surveillance In the names is a joke.
UPDATE
I use FTP to upload the video recordings to my server! This afternoon I had call to look at them, only to find the last recording was The app has noted abnormal sound but no recording.
