Asante 99-00848 Progressive 1.3 MP Day and Night Human Recognition Internet Security camera

A very good camera. Most likely the best out there for the price. Can't beat the resolution at 1024x768 and at 15 fps it is pretty decent.I thought I would give a newbie a pretty good idea of how to use it.The Voyager has fairly good control panel which you can access anytime by entering the ip address of the camera into a browser.I personally use it on a Synology NAS server so the camera's are managed by another dedicated box.Initially you set it up by connecting your ethernet cable to it. And clicking settings/network will give you access to the wireless pages. Enable wireless, and it will scan for wireless ssid's and with luck will find your wireless router. Click on your's and if you have dhcp enabled your router will hook to it. From that point on it it will remember your router. And you will never need to hook a cable to it again. You can manage all of them wirelessly after this.From there you have a number of options to use it including viewing it directly from the built-in browser app. You can either have it stream live or upload to a ftp or samba server. It has a number of streaming options which I have not tested. But at 1024x768 4+ camera's your going to need a fast router or reduce the fps on the camera's. But with a low-end netgear it can handle 3/4 camera's. After that the frame rate become erratic. Caused by the huge bandwidth load on the router.Or you can use the Events tab to setup camera based motion detection and using the wizard it will ask if you want to setup a ftp client.Then you can have it have it upload the video only when it detects motion.For those complaining about difficulty in setting it up. It is no more complex than setting up any other device that has embedded wireless capability. For those having problems with the pages not showing up, hit F5 (refesh). Seems this is common problem on most small web enabled control panels.I do warn you that if your using this in a high security situation this is probably not for you. This is a China based product and has a fully capable embedded linux OS in it. I have found that almost all internet enabled China based products have backdoors and phone home. And this one is no exception. Every one of these camera's once hooked to your router can talk out to the internet. I should also mention that each camera has the excuse of accessing ntp (network time) to keep the datetime correct.Within a day of using it with ftp enabled I noticed it was pinging out to 204.11.51.93 which then within hours I had external attempts to log into my ftp server (from China). So I would keep the ftp option turned off on this. I haven't proven if this can occur even without setting up the ftp yet. But your best bet is to lock your router to prevent sending external outgoing messages from the ip's of your cameras. This is accomplished using IPTable commands in your router. Use either DDWRT or Tomato to truly lockdown your router. I find Tomato better from a functional security standpoint. You cannot truly lockdown a router using the factory os provided on it.The camera does have a few flaws, It has extremely bad low-light sensitivity. The ring of IR Led's around it will barely help beyond 10 feet. But this is true of most budget CCD cameras. So you get what you pay for. I suggest you just go ahead and buy an external IR light for around 10 bucks. Once this is done, this is a great camera.For those using this on a Synology box it does in fact work well. Currently it is NOT in the compatibility list. But to use it just set the "Add camera brand" to "user defined" and for the source path set it to "/image.jpg?type=motion" then it will start to work. None of the special features in surveillance station will work with this camera. But that is to be expected since synology didn't write specifically for it. But Motion detection done by synology will work nonetheless.

It met my expectations.I bought a Pelican case for it, cut some holes for the wires now it's an outside camera, used to see the street from my Acer Iconia Tab200, or any of my PCs.Word of warning if you want to the smart feature working on it you have to run a program which does the recording on a Windows PC, or you can just have it email you still photos via G-Mail really easy to setup for a techie like me.

I have purchased 6 of these camera's at different times. a great camera and software for the cost. The only problem is that they are increasingly hard to find in stock..

The night vision could be better, but overall this is a nice compact wifi camera that integrates in with many software packages.

These are great for Daylight Hours.. But their Night Vision really SUCKS..

I love the software, great low level mgea pixel camera. The camera was very is to setup, it just worked.

I was apprehensive to buy this camera as I thought the reviews maybe fake (according to one review), but I purchased the cam anyway as it fit my needs. The cam has excellent resolution and functions well in a daylight, you can access it from anywhere over the internet and watch your home. It was my first time setting up IP cam and I needed help. I emailed the support at Asante and to my surprise they got back to me right away and the guy called me back few times and made sure camera is working properly. The support center is somewhere on the Western US and not in India. I am pleased with my purchase. For regular viewing I found free software called "IP Camera Viewer" prefer it over the browser, or you can use the software that came with the package. Hope this helps you.Update May 2013I purchased some Foscam cameras for much cheaper and with ability to rotate, better colors. The Asante cam is way to pricey for what it provides, the color is bad (everything is grayish), the night vision is not usable. Their support is still great.Update 9/2013by now this cam should cost $40, for $60-70 you can by new technology with rotation, true color, sound, night vision.

Daytime resolution is excellent, colors a little faded. Night time is worthless, maybe defective. Have since bought 3 Foscams with pan, tilt & night vision for less money and have worked flawlessly so far.