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The only issue is finding a powered outdoor speaker for use with two-way communications. This Panasonic outdoor camera is a great little product. Except for this issue the camera works as advertised. Panasonic wasn't able to provide a vendor and we haven't been able to find one on our own. It is used outside our condo and it has operated in temperatures of -5 without any issues. An attached SD card allows many photos to be saved on a chip and the zoom lens allows us to see things pretty close.
For example, I cannot acquire a time lapse movie of an overnight shot. What the heck kind of image format is that.Another gripe is that night vision isn't great. I purchased this camera because I didn't want to run Ethernet cable to my router. Note that with the BB-HCM371A, you still have to run wire for power, which sort of defeats the wireless concept.Be warned that you still need an ethernet cable to plug into your router for set up.Speaking of setup, if you don't know your network settings, this camera will be a pain to setup. :-(Also, downloaded images are in PCN form. I mounted my camera high and I was afraid I was going to drop it while threading it to the mount. It's feature-rich, but I cannot capture images the way I like.
Once you play it once, you cannot play it again. There's also a bug when you play the time-lapse motion image.
Fortunately for me, I managed to configure it successfully and I'm no system administrator.Physical installation was straight forward. If a prowler saunters into camera shot at 2:00AM, I wouldn't see him.
If this is not a problem for you, I would recommend you check out the BB-HCM311A. I either get the first few seconds or the last few seconds.
In this day and age, a camera like this should perform better in terms of night vision. For example, if you don't know the IP to your DNS, you're in trouble.
Panasonic really should have come up with a safety system where you can tether the camera while you screw it in place.My biggest gripe is the web-based software.
Picture quality is good for a camera in this price range. The BB-HCM371A is easy to setup if your router supports Universal Plug'n'Play (I'm using a late model Linksys 54G). underneath a roof overhang is ideal. Camera is best mounted out of direct sunlight. If you're using several other cameras in addition to this one, you may have do some manual configuration of the router ports. Panasonic's setup instructions are adequate but clearly they've been translated from Japanese.
Sound quality from the camera is very good. I use dynamic DNS to access the camera remotely via DSL. Plus, it's evident that a lot of the instructions written into the camera firmware were done by a non-native English-speaking individual. The motion detection is good and triggers reliably to upload images to an FTP site.
I've used this camera for the better part of a year now. I can hear the frogs chirping in a nearby riverbed right now.For what it's worth, I also own a very expensive Axis camera. I've successfully viewed the camera remotely via my Motorola Q. I've used it in a variety of locations and conditions.
The camera is very configurable, but best-suited for the tech-savvy. The bottom line is that, although this camera has room for improvement, it still comes pretty close to justifying its cost. It's presently mounted outdoors and transmitting wirelessly to a router sitting indoors 340' away. The framerate is decent, but still-picture quality (clarity) could definitely be better -- especially when the subject is moving.
If you're a Mac user, make sure you have access to a Windows machine to get it out of UPnP. This product has potential but it its shortcomings get in the way of its utility. It would be nice if there was a switch that could be flipped manually to tell the camera to use DHCP instead of UPnP (which I don't find "that universal").The second thing that really surprised me was that this unit only supports WEP wireless security instead of WPA. I think it defaults a 192.168.x.x. To use this unit wirelessly in my network, which is why I bought it, I will have to gut the security of the rest of my network. I just received this unit and have to state that I'm rather disappointed.
The only way I could initially talk to the unit was to dig out an old PC and use the enclosed CD. Until they add WPA, I can't recommend this unit. First, we are an all-Mac household with a SonicWall firewall but this unit is so heavily PC-dependent that it would not work out the box with either. This is a serious shortcoming, in my opinion, especially for such an expensive camera.Finally, I'm finding the Panasonic support site clumsy and limited in scope and utility. address. Another reviewer said it would work with the Macintosh but I couldn't even see the unit in the ARP cache or the DHCP leases of the firewall.
For all the talk about security in the documentation and in the setup tools, WEP is a very poor choice.
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