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Author Topic: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.  (Read 21466 times)

HA Dave

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #15 on: November 20, 2011, 06:24:36 PM »

I am not an expert, but to view the pictures from "anywhere in the world", I believe you will need to configure something called 'port-forwarding' on the router. 

You sound pretty expert to me Walt2. Although the camera should come with a setup CD (software) it may or maynot require more expertise than the OP has available. But it would require setup through the "neighbors" router via a computer connected to that router.
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Jeff M

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #16 on: November 21, 2011, 11:22:11 AM »

In general, you connect the IP Camera to your router with an ethernet cable.  It should be supplied with the camera.  Open the router configuration and look at attached devices.  You should see the camera, and the assigned IP address.  The router will assign an address like 192.168.0.6, or something similar.  This is just an address on your router, not your actual internet address.  There should be a setting someplace in the router configuration to give the camera this address as a static address.  This means that each time your camera connects to the router, it will always be given that IP address.  There is also a setting on the camera setup to enter this IP address.  Now you have to set up port forwarding on the router.   Pick a port number, such as 8040, and set up that port to forward to the IP address of the camera.  So now, lets say that your actual internet IP address is something like 36.24.36.1, you would access your IP camera with the URL http://36.24.36.1:8040.  Yes, this is confusing, and routers have different setup screens.  Hope this helps at least a little bit.
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HA Dave

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #17 on: November 21, 2011, 11:52:47 AM »

In general, you connect the IP Camera to your router with an ethernet cable. 

I think most of the cameras can use ether a patch cable or setup via secure or non-secure wifi (wireless).
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Jeff M

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #18 on: November 21, 2011, 12:05:05 PM »

I forgot to add that once you have your IP Camera working properly with the cable attached, you should be able to restart the camera without the cable and it should connect via WiFi.  The cable is only for initial setup.
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astrothug

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #19 on: November 21, 2011, 02:15:26 PM »

also its .3 megapixel.. lol its going to look like crap is my guess....
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fubaya

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #20 on: November 22, 2011, 08:54:49 PM »

I have a Foscam like this and they're meant to be used indoors so you may have to watch out for weather depending on where you mount it. Mine is outside under an overhang and has worked well, but the lens gets fogged up sometimes and I have to point it toward the sun for a day or more to clear it out. (I'm just using mine until it dies and I can replace it with something better.) I read that the pan/tilt will stop working at freezing temperatures, and direct rain will surely kill it for good. The glare will keep you from leaving it inside and pointing it out a window. But putting it inside and watching the interior of a building works great.

They won't work with X10 directly, but the real Foscams have an API that you can use to control the camera with http get requests. The clones may or may not work the same.

This may be more than the OP wanted but I've never seen so many Foscam owners in one place before, so if anyone is interested in the API, I went through several versions of it (some were half in Chinese) to get as many commands as I could and put them in a script which I meant to clean up and make more respectable but never did.

http://a-more-common-hades.blogspot.com/2011/02/foscam-control-script-etc.html

It's for Linux, but wherever you see "${addy}", just replace that with "http://user:password@ip:port" and it'll work from anything that can do http requests, even a browser. The last section was a hastily written help section that may explain the commands a little bit. As haphazardly as it was put together, I've been using the script for a year with my computer and phone. At dusk and dawn, I have the settings change automatically and point in a different direction and with an X10 motion sensor is triggered, the script points the cam in a preset direction, etc.
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systemdm

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #21 on: November 22, 2011, 10:35:33 PM »

fubaya,

Thanks for the script.  They really expand the functionality of this camera.
Helpful from me.
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fubaya

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Re: Question about IP cameras - does this exist? New here.
« Reply #22 on: November 23, 2011, 11:38:49 AM »

Glad it was useful.

Rereading my post, let me clarify one poorly written part.

"It's for Linux, but wherever you see "${addy}", just replace that with "http://user:password@ip:port" and it'll work from anything that can do http requests, even a browser."

I don't mean the script will work, but you can get the url from the script, replace the addy part with http://user:password@ip:port and that's the url that can be used to control if from a browser or another scripting language or program or whatever. Basically, if you don't use Linux you can still look at it and get a big list of the http commands available.
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