The IP Camera Store and IP Cam Blog

Today is a milestone in the development of our company Network Webcams Limited. After months of blood, sweat and headaches our updated e-commerce store www.networkwebcams.com has now gone live. Whereas in the past only UK customers could order on-line, now customers in sixteen European countries can do so too. The expansion into Europe follows our success in the UK, where we have taken and delivered over 1,800 IP camera orders in just over the two years that the site has been running. Our European customers will benefit from exactly the same support and service as we provide in the UK: speed of response and delivery, expert advice and technical support, buy & try and a no quibble service when something is not right. We are grateful to all members in our team, who have been serving our customers with such dedication and professionalism, that we can confidently make this step into Europe. Enough said, have a look for yourself at www.networkwebcams.com.

As of today we are discontinuing the sale of the following Panasonic cameras:

• BL-C10
• BL-C30
• BB-HCE481

These models have been superceded with new up to date models. To find out more, keep reading… Read more

The stereotypical surfer dude has given way to determined and technologically aware individuals, male and female, who stops at nothing to catch the best waves.

Gone are the days when these guys wander down to the beach to “hopefully” catch a wave. They now use sophisticated equipment including IP technology, broadband services and weather data solutions to monitor the wave action.

Truly dedicated sports men and women, whose lives revolve around the ocean, work commitments, shopping or homework play second fiddle to surfing the waves.

Surf related websites like Wavewatch have become an integral part of everyday life. To outsiders they are full of statistical data which doesn’t mean very much, but to the avid surfer they are a direct connection to Mother Nature. Up to the minute weather information including swell heights, wind speeds, satellite imagery, isobars and water temperatures. Indeed, everything a surfer needs to catch the best barrels.

Our Streamdays service has become another important tool to the surfing fraternity. Our live uk webcams at Croyde Bay, Newquay and Cornwall have become extremely popular, and we fully expect this trend to continue.

If you have a surfcam and would like for it to be included on www.streamdays.com please contact us. We are soon to launch a free webcam hosting service which is aimed at making it simpler than ever to launch a professional interactive webcam on your website.

If you don’t already have a webcam, Streamdays offers a number of packages to get you started. Just give us a call on 0151 633 2111.

Other Surfing and Weather Data Providers:

Taking British surfing into the 21st Century (www.a1surf.com)
Connected to the wind (www.windfinder.com)
Know before you go (www.surfline.com)
Surf reports, forecasts and photos (www.magicseaweed.com)

We’ve just taken delivery of a Panasonic BL-C131, the new successor to the amazingly popular BL-C30. We’ve had a play, and here’s a list of the key improvements that the new model offers over its original:

• Simultaneous MJPEG and MPEG-4: The new MPEG-4 mode (the Panasonic BL-C30 only offered MJPEG video) allows video streaming at a full 30fps across all resolutions including VGA 640×480, giving a much smoother performance at the camera’s maximum resolution. As this relies on an Active-X plug-in this feature is compatible in Internet Explorer (IE) only.
• 1-way Audio: The BL-C131 now offers 1-way audio support by using a built-in microphone allowing the viewer to listen in on sounds where the camera is positioned. We found the microphone to be extremely sensitive and work rather well. Again, this is reliant on ActiveX, so IE only.
• Motion Detection: The Panasonic BL-C30 could only trigger events based on the thermal sensor input. The new BL-C131 offers built-in motion detection support as well as thermal sensor detection. A nice addition. With clever use of triggers you can now reduce the number of false positives you would normally recieve from a camera alarm using these detection methods. For example, if you set up both motion and thermal detection and you recieve an alert from both then you know, with much more certainty, that there is a person in front of the camera as it has detected movement and heat.
• Full Screen Mode: This improved model now offers a full-screen mode which enlarges the field of view significantly when monitoring your camera. In any other browser it seems to display at the same size but in IE it is significantly larger than VGA (640×480) so this is probably reliant on the Active-X control again.
• IPv6 Compatibility: To future-proof the camera it now comes as standard with IPv6 support out of the box. Probably not required right now but handy to have when it’s needed.
• Improved User Interface: The configuration menus within the camera are much improved over the Panasonic BL-C30, particularly around event management and it seems much more emphasis has been put on automatic setup.

A full evaluation of the product will be available shortly.

We’re taking orders right now for this camera and its sister model the BL-C111 (wired ethernet equivalent/non-wireless), please see the links below for full specification and ordering details:

Panasonic BL-C111 Compact IP camera Pan/Tilt Audio Heat Sensor
Panasonic BL-C131 Wireless IP camera Pan/Tilt Audio Heat Sensor