One of the Christmas gifts I bought myself was a new wireless network camera. Why would I need a network camera? For two reasons. Reason one: For fun. Reason two: When I had to evacuate my house during the fires last October, it would have been nice to have had this camera up and running so I could remotely monitor my home. The Panasonic BL-C131A camera can be placed anywhere inside my condo (not for outdoor use, however, it can be placed to look out a window) and the pictures are transmitted to my wireless router. Then they can be viewed from any Internet connection. In fact, the camera can stream 640x480 at 30 frames per second in MJPEG or MPEG-4 format, plus sound. It can also be remotely controlled, with the ability to move the camera up, down, right and left. I have set up an account so people can log in and view the camera, and have limited controls (I'm not giving this address to the whole world for privacy reasons, and besides, there is nothing to watch except me sitting here scratching my nose).
The good: it works as advertised. The bad: the picture quality is not very good, the zoom is digital only, you need Active-X to control the camera, so on an Apple you can view the video, but can't control the camera or hear audio (unless you have Parallels and run Windows on your Mac). The biggest problem is the camera keeps loosing connection with the router, requiring a reset of the camera. This can only be done from my computer here at home, or once a day automatically, which I have it set to do. Now to be fair, I don't think this is the camera's problem. My wireless router, a D-Link WBR-2310, which I wrote a review of last year, tends to "hang-up" briefly during the day. If it does, the network camera loses connection. I have read of other people having problems with this wireless router, and one person suggested lowering the MTU, which is described in detail here. I did this and it does not seem to help. At this point I don't know what to do. Out of all the reviews I read about wireless network cameras, this Panasonic had the best reviews, and all reviews I read about wireless routers complained about them hanging up. So, I'll figure something out.
Added on 02/14/2008: Recently, the camera has been loosing its wireless connection with my router. The light on the camera blinks orange. Sometimes it fixes itself, other times I unplug it for a few seconds and the problem stops. I don't know if this problem is with the camera or my router. I did recently change my wireless encryption from WEP to WPA-2, which caused no problems with the camera at the time.
***** Updated on 01/20/2009: I finally bought a new router. Read about it here. Hopefully this will fix my problem with the camera locking-up.
23 comments:
Cool. Was looking into this webcam as well. So far it has the best review. Glad to hear that it is working for you.
get a new router...
i have two of these cams running through a linksys wireless access point and they work great. life is to short, wireless routers are cheap
Sounds like a good idea ishik. Now I have something to do this weekend.
I,m having a problem with the wireless. Just will not go Green .The Mac Address on the Status page ends with (7C) but the monitor is (7D)? Also UPnP and User-specified DNS shows disabled . Any Ideas where I went wrong installing ? ?
Do I need viewnetcam ?
The camera has two MAC addresses. The one shown on the Status page and another which is that value +1, So 7C + 1 = 7D (Hexadecimal numbers). This second MAC address is only important if your router is set up to only allow access by MAC address, which mine is. My camera status shows User Specified DNS as disabled. Your UPnP should be Enabled. If it isn't make sure UPnP is enabled on your wireless router. That setting is hidden in the Advanced Network setup. Viewnetcam is only necessary if you wish to view your camera from any computer connected to the Internet around the world. I use it and it works well, unless my wireless router hangs up, which it does about once a day. That is why I have my camera reset itself every morning at 6AM. Overall, I followed the directions that came with the camera and it just happened to work the first time. If it does not, reconnect the network cable to the camera, switch to wired, power off for a few seconds. Then recheck all your settings on the router and camera and also power off the router for a few seconds. Then try the camera wireless again as instructed. Hope this helps.
You can control the camera with out windoze. I just set one up today. I am running 10.4.11.
check out :
http://www.networkwebcams.com/ip-camera-learning-center/2008/05/16/howto-set-up-a-panasonic-ip-camera-using-a-mac/
DNFTT.
I purchased a wired and a wireless version of these last year. My wife and I live on a farm in Central Texas and I've had things stolen on two occasions. We also have grass fires here.
We left for our 25 year anniversary in London and on Christmas Eve (actually the entire 2 weeks we were gone) I was able to see the insides of my house in real time and get "motion alerts" sent to my cell phone while in London and Edinburgh. My house sitter triggered the alerts when she came by every other day. It was totally amazing to see her, and then call her on her cell phone and actually describe to her the clothing she was wearing.
That being said, you have to be a "Super Geek" to get these things working on the internet. I've actually built and flown my own airplane and installed all the avionics (see my first flight on YouTube, type in TuuTuuTango and look for "First Flight Experimental" but I had to hire a Geek Squad guy to install my cameras. It took him two trips to make these work as advertised.
Some people have complained about low-light capability... I am not one of those! They do good enough for my needs. I spent 20 years in broadcast television and unless you spend MEGA-BUCKs not much will impress me in regard to low liggt cameras.
The cameras are WONDERFUL and I am adding a 3rd wireless outside (in a weatherproof housing) in a week or two (having to hire the same geek who has left Best Buy...
Watch my YouTube videos. I might add a new video showing how my 3 Panasonic cameras work.
I have a similar setup as well. In my case I have a linksys running DD-WRT. The camera loses connection frequently requiring a restart. But in my case this is not the routers fault as the router's running fine (has been running for months without requiring a restart).
With the new router, does the camera still freeze?
You shouldn't have purchased Belkin - all those positive rating, they were all paid by Belkin! Belkin was caught red handed. More info here:
http://i.gizmodo.com/5134652/belkin-employee-sheds-light-on-belkins-supposedly-dirty-practices#viewcomments
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/17/belkin-paying-65-cents-for-good-reviews-on-newegg-and-amazon/
http://www.thedailybackground.com/2009/01/19/belkin-whistleblower-alleges-systemic-wrongdoing-this-only-scratches-the-surface/
Thank you very much for that bit of information, anon. I was hesitant to buy the Belkin, but I read good and bad reviews of all other routers too. So far, the Belkin has worked great. I stopped getting dropped connections for both wired and wireless connections to the router, and my netcam no longer requires daily resets. I've only had the router for a few days, but already I like it better than the D-Link. If the router continues to function with no problems, I'll write a good review for free!
Glad to hear things are working out for you! It's me the poster before your post - Anon.
I bought a new router like you to see if the problem will go away, no joy. The camera again lost connection to the router, though the router seems to work fine and did not restart or anything. I use WEP.
I'm running out of ideas as to what might be causing this cam to lose connection.
The thing about the router is that it could lose its connection during the night and you would never know. The BL-C131 camera seems to be very sensitive. I'm still happy with the camera, except for that it takes very poor still photos. I had an older Intel USB camera that didn't stream video or sound, but it took better photographs, in case I wanted to quickly take a photo of something in my room.
I've found your site because I've just installed a Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera and I have problem loosing my connection. So, I'm sure it is not your router problem, it is a camera problem. I'm trying to solve it.
Good luck
Hi iPodTouchUser. My Panasonic camera has worked great since I got the new Belkin N+ router. The only time it sort-of stopped working was when I installed a program called "nmap" on my PC and scanned the ports in my other computer, router, printer and the camera. That program must have done something to my router, because when I reset the router the camera worked fine. In fact, it had been working, but the green light was blinking yellow, indicating some kind of problem.
Thanks for your interesting comment, Homer. My router is an Apple Airport Extreme N. The camera looses it's connection since the first day I installed it (3 days). I've tried connecting it to the router with a wire or using it wirelessely. The camera still lost the connection. I've reboot the router with no success.
I have a PC and a Mac at home.
Have you noticed if having more than one user has an effect on the camera behaviour ?
Many thanks.
I've never had more than two people connected to my camera at the same time, and it worked fine. My old D-Link router did lose its connection on devices connected wirelessly and directly. I have read about other people having problems with the Panasonic camera. Sometime you just get a defective product. I bought a Panasonic Blu Ray player and it did not work right. I returned it and got another, same model, and it worked great.
Hello there!
this is all fascinating. I've just had to come all the way to france to reset my 2 panny 131's! It all seems ok then i test by switching the router (Livebox) on and off. The cameras just lose their ability to be accessed from viewnet. I've just reset them and they work again. Why is there a reset option in the setup? Is it for this very reason? I've now set them to restart at 3.00am daily and am crossing fingers.
David
I used to have my camera reset every morning because it kept disconnecting once or twice a week. Then I bought a new wireless router and the problem went away so I don't have it reset every day now. However, I added a HP home media server to my network, and now the Panasonic camera's LED blinks yellow all the time, but still works. I'll figure out this problem eventually.
Homer,
Thanks for the info/tip about the MAC Address +1 on the wireless... was going nuts trying to figure out why I couldn't get it to connect with MAC security on the wireless router.
Well I have the same cam, have had it hooked to three different routers, the cam will still lose connection from time to time causing me to have to reset to get it working. So when I finally had enough I decided to hardwire the cam, thinking the wireless was causing my issue, worked great for about a week, then lost connection again even with a LAN cable, so now I'm at a loss of ideas, anyone have any? Or is this camera junk? Or am I missing a setting somewhere?
James, I don't use the camera much but just check it from work and it is working. I don't know if the camera is junk or if it is just so hard to set up and keep it connected with other devices connected to a computer, either wireless or hard-wired. I know when I have my HP Media server running, the light on the camera turns yellow, but still works. I think that is because the camera and media server use the same port for port forwarding in my router. Next time I buy a web cam I'm going to get one that can rotate 360 degrees in all directions.
I have the same Panasonic BL-C131A network camera and it works well mostly. I also have the yellow LED blinking all the time but the camera works just fine. Now for the disconnect issue: I had used a free Dynamic DNS service from this one company and my camera was somewhat working when accessing from the internet. But after a while they started to nag me about getting a paid account for "better, more reliable service". They forced me to log on to my account at least once a month to keep it free. It was during this time that my camera kept losing connection to my router with the blinking yellow LED. I got fed up and switched to Panasonic's own Dynamic DNS service which is offered for free for the users for their webcams and this works flawlessly. I have never lost my cam's internet connection since then. But the yellow LED still blinks all the time but my internal 192.168.x.x connection works fine and so does the outside remote connection from the internet. There could be other reason for the camera to router disconnections such as signal strength from the placement of the camera and the router, interference from nearby wifi/wireless devices such as cordless phones etc. Try placing the camera as close to the router as possible even if the two are on different floors. For instance, my webcam is on the first floor living room and my router is in the basement, but the camera is directly above the router on the different floors, so the distance is very small. For people who think that their camera is disconnecting based on the blinking yellow LED light, please check to see if the camera is actually still connecting despite the yellow light, it maybe still be connected. In my case since the camera works ok, I don't bother about the blinking yellow light any more.
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