Wireless Security Cameras 2011 Edition

October 14, 2011 7:35 AM

What is the current best wireless camera for remote monitoring?

I would like to get a couple wireless cameras to monitor the house and cat while away. Ideally they would do the following:

• Pan and tilt.
• Web control.
• iPad/Iphone viewing/control
• Pickup and send sound
• Perhaps record
• Perhaps display on TV as well

I don't want the signal to have to go to some online service. I want to be able to install and use the web app in my own hosted environment.

posted by cjorgensen to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: I just did this to monitor my cats -- it arrived yesterday, and so far I'm thrilled. I got the Foscam FI8918W. It took me about an hour to set it up such that I can monitor it over the internet in real time (pan/tilt/sound). I also set it up to send an image when motion is detected during the day (ie when I'm at work) to sensr.net, which is free. This essentially records what my cats got up to during the day, for later viewing. There are several iPhone apps to control the camera in real-time as well; I tried both a free one and a $5 one, and they're both pretty good.

The web interface to configure the camera is horrific; it's like it got stuck in 1999 or something, but you can do everything you need to do.
posted by cgg at 8:33 AM on October 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh -- i just saw the part about how you want it internally hosted. No problems -- watching it live is totally on you; my local network is setup with dyndns; I just set and and opened the port on my router, and it was good to go. The camera will upload on motion to an ftp site, which is how sensr.net works. You can use any ftp, including your own.
posted by cgg at 8:35 AM on October 14, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks. That was actually the model I was looking at. I thought there might be something better out there. If no one pipes up I plan to get that.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:48 PM on October 14, 2011