Anyone tried a wireless webcam when not home?

Fieroguy19 · Nov 10, 2011

So I have been looking for a way to keep an eye on my reef when I am out of town for the weekend or on vacation, holidays, etc. I was at OfficeMax and saw these wireless webcams that are much cheaper than the ones I saw about a year ago. Has anyone tried the one below or had good results with any other ones?

DLink DCS 930L
D-Link DCS 930L mydlink-enabled Wireless N Home Network Camera Network camera - fixed#

I like the fact that I can check from my phone without needing a computer.

jduck · Nov 10, 2011

Yes I have that one. I use the app for iPhone to check on tank

Fieroguy19 · Nov 10, 2011

So do you think it was worth getting? Is the video quality good enough to see in the tank pretty well?

R2R News Bot · Nov 10, 2011

I have and it saved me a couple times on one trip! The one I got was under $100, wireless, and you can pan and tilt. I set it to where I can see the tank and then have it tilt down to check the top off reservoir. While I was out of town I saw that the ATO pump got jammed as well as one time my LED lights stuck on because of a power outage. Oh yea and I knew we had a power outage because of it. LOL!

http://www.amazon.com/Foscam-FI8918W-Wireless-Network-Viewing/dp/B0046710G6

I even could pan all the way around and look around the house and for the cat! LOL! There are apps that allow you to control it from your laptop, iphone, and ipad.

ReefLEDLights · Nov 10, 2011

jduck said:
Yes I have that one. I use the app for iPhone to check on tank

hows your luck with it?

With my netgear routers I couldn't get any of the dlink webcams to ever establish a decent connection and frame rate.

ReefLEDLights · Nov 10, 2011

R2R News Bot said:
I have and it saved me a couple times on one trip! The one I got was under $100, wireless, and you can pan and tilt. I set it to where I can see the tank and then have it tilt down to check the top off reservoir. While I was out of town I saw that the ATO pump got jammed as well as one time my LED lights stuck on because of a power outage. Oh yea and I knew we had a power outage because of it. LOL!

http://www.amazon.com/Foscam-FI8918W-Wireless-Network-Viewing/dp/B0046710G6

I even could pan all the way around and look around the house and for the cat! LOL! There are apps that allow you to control it from your laptop, iphone, and ipad.

do you have a public link to it? I have actually been looking into that exact unit.

florida reef · Nov 11, 2011

I'd like to hear more about different people's experiences with these cameras.

revsgirl · Nov 11, 2011

We have one! If we hadn't have had it when we were at MACNA we probably would have lost everything. With it, we were able to tell that our power went out, and when it came back on something triggered the lights to go on full force! It would have burnt everything up! Thank goodness David had the webcam and was able to send someone out to shut the lights off! If you travel, this is a great thing to have!!

Fieroguy19 · Nov 11, 2011

R2R News Bot said:
I have and it saved me a couple times on one trip! The one I got was under $100, wireless, and you can pan and tilt. I set it to where I can see the tank and then have it tilt down to check the top off reservoir. While I was out of town I saw that the ATO pump got jammed as well as one time my LED lights stuck on because of a power outage. Oh yea and I knew we had a power outage because of it. LOL!

http://www.amazon.com/Foscam-FI8918W-Wireless-Network-Viewing/dp/B0046710G6

I even could pan all the way around and look around the house and for the cat! LOL! There are apps that allow you to control it from your laptop, iphone, and ipad.

That one looks pretty nice. My initial goal was to find one that was under $100 and had pan/tilt. I will be seriously considering this one. Thanks

eastamherstbias · Nov 12, 2011

Buy a foscam camera. I have 15 of them throughout my work. They are cheap.

ruppertb · Nov 12, 2011

can they zoom also, like could i put this 10 feet away on top of my cabnets and zoom into the tank?

Fieroguy19 · Nov 14, 2011

Just bought the Foscam one in the link you provided. Hopefully that will ease my nearves over the holiday season.

ruppertb · Nov 16, 2011

keep us updated plz

eastamherstbias · Nov 19, 2011

Wesley42079 · Nov 19, 2011

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm trying to get my wife to get this as an early Christmas present, since we'll be on vacation next month.

R2R News Bot said:
I have and it saved me a couple times on one trip! The one I got was under $100, wireless, and you can pan and tilt. I set it to where I can see the tank and then have it tilt down to check the top off reservoir. While I was out of town I saw that the ATO pump got jammed as well as one time my LED lights stuck on because of a power outage. Oh yea and I knew we had a power outage because of it. LOL!

Amazon.com: Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67Â° Viewing Angle) - Black NEWEST MODEL (replaces the FI8908W): Camera & Photo

I even could pan all the way around and look around the house and for the cat! LOL! There are apps that allow you to control it from your laptop, iphone, and ipad.

Fieroguy19 · Nov 28, 2011

So the Foscam arrived a few days before Thanksgiving so I went ahead and got it setup before I left for a few days. It was pretty simple to setup so that you could look at the tank from your computer when connected to your home network. Getting it to work from outside the home was alot harder and it took me a few hours to get everything worked out with the router but I got it done.

Upsides
Has pan/tilt so I can check both display and sump to make sure everything is working.
The infrared is pretty cool for seeing the fish and anything else at night.

Downsides
No way to adjust white balence so if you have heavy blue lighting then the whole tank just looks blue. During the day when my tank is around 12k lighting you can see colors pretty well though.

DYNDNS no longer lets you host for free and so if you want to look at the tank away from home it is $20 per year or $2 per month. I think that Foscam is working on an update so you can use a different provider that would be free.

Infra Red photos

Fieroguy19 · Nov 28, 2011

A few min ago from my phone.

swannyson7 · Dec 1, 2011

For those of you with the wireless cams, what apps are you using from your phone to monitor the cams? In the past, I've always just set up my laptop in front of the tank with the built in webcam so that I could monitor the tank, but I just picked up two cameras so that I could monitor both tanks without leaving my laptop behind. One of them is a Foscam so that I can Pan/tilt/zoom to look at the sump, ATO reservoir level, etc. and the other is a cheapo linksys. I downloaded the app "IP cam viewer" for my droid and it seems to work pretty well. It lets me pan/tilt/zoom and I can monitor both cams at the same time with a split screen. It also has a widget to put on the home screen with feeds from all cameras with a 1 second refresh rate. Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for other apps to try out?