Edimax IC-7000PTn Network Camera

The IC-7000PTn IP camera is reasonably priced given its range of features and image quality, and would be ideal for almost any surveillance task.

Edimax IC-7000PTn Network Camera
Price: £160
Sensor: CMOS
Lens: manual focus 4.0mm
Microphone: yes
Resolution: 320x240 30fps, 640x480 1024x768 20fps using MJPEG
Network: 10/100bps WiFi 802 b/g
Power Zoom: No
Power Focus: No
Pan/Tilt: Yes
Power: Adaptor
Consumption: 10W
Size: 108 x 112 x 108 mm t
Weight: 0.32Kg

The IC-7000PTn is a feature packed WiFi IP camera with remote pan and tilt. It may look a little odd but it works very well and can be mounted on a wall or ceiling or on a tripod. Two screw-in aerials are supplied along with a wall mount. It has a manual focus lens with no zoom function but the image quality is very good.

You can select between a number of resolutions and image qualities - either MPEG 4 or MJPEG compression can be used. As well as a WiFi connection there is also a standard wired connection and while it is possible to set the camera up using just the WiFi connection it is much simpler to establish a wired connection, configure the WiFi connection and then move the camera to its final location.

It supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 security and it can be configured automatically using WPS if the access point supports it. The camera can also set up a direct internet connection using PPPoE via an ADSL modem or router. For remote operation the camera needs two ports to be open - 80 and a user-designated AV control port 4321 by default. It also supports dynamic DNS but only if you use dyndns.org.

If you don't want to connect the camera permanently to a network then there is an SD card slot which can be used to store images and video clips. Of course you can use the SD card as backup if the Internet connection is lost. As the web interface uses an ActiveX control, the camera only works with IE and not Firefox or similar browsers.

A pan/tilt control provides the interaction needed to point the camera. Alternatively you can simply drag on the camera video window with the mouse in the direction you want the camera to move. You can adjust the speed of movement but not interactively so you can't pan to a location quickly and then slow down. Even so the interface makes it very easy to point the camera and the availability of high resolution modes and digital zoom makes up somewhat for the camera not having an optical zoom.

Auto brightness and contrast work well enough for the camera to cope with indoor and outdoor scenes and it is very tolerant of changing light conditions. You can manually adjust brightness, contrast and sharpness. There is no automatic scanning facility but the use of preset points provides a sophisticated facility.

Next page: preset tracks and images

Read more about tilt and pan IP cameras in labs