Product blog

On Test: Y-cam Black

October 12th, 2007 by Greg

Y-cam Black: £149.00 (ex. VAT) (update: replacement is Y-cam Black S at £134 + vat

Night Goggles On

Hot on the heels of the launch of their competitively priced Y-cam White the people at Y-cam have gone and launched a most unique camera with the Y-cam Black. It had been designed for home/small business security in mind and comes with 30 infrared LEDs built into the camera body. This incredibly useful feature allows the camera to auto-switch between colour daylight viewing and night vision mode, providing useful images in complete darkness thanks to infrared illumination. A feature such as this in a camera at this price point really is worth a look.

1. Accessories

Inside the box you will find the following:

The camera comes complete with an indoor power supply (1m length of cable), a camera mounting stand, CD-ROM with initial installation software and a paper-based Quick Installation Guide. Other than an ethernet cable to initially configure the camera (something that could be included in the future) everything is supplied to get you started.

2. Installation

The camera achieves power using the supplied AC adaptor. Simply plug into any standard power socket to power the camera. The length of cable on the AC adapter is quite small at only 1m which is a concern but the manufacturer has informed us that this will be extended to 2m in the future and that 5m extensions are available for both their Black and White models.

Setting up the camera is very simple.

The camera comes with a setup program on the CD-ROM. You can use this to identify and change the camera’s IP address.

If you plug your Y-cam into a router to do the initial configuration then the camera will attempt to obtain an IP address automatically using DHCP (assuming this is enabled in your router). Otherwise the default details are:

IP address: 192.168.1.150

Default username: admin
Default password: 1234

The camera supports wireless 802.11 b/g networking with the following encryption protocols:

• WEP, 64bit, Ascii, 5 Characters
• WEP, 64bit, Hex, 10 Characters
• WEP, 128bit, ASCII, 13 Characters
• WEP, 128bit, HEX, 26 Characters
• WPA-PSK, TKIP, 27 Characters
• WPA-PSK, AES, 27 Characters
• WPA2-PSK, TKIP, 27 Characters
• WPA2-PSK, AES, 27 Characters

3. Viewing

The Y-CAM Black is a static IP network camera with 30 built-in infrared LEDs providing auto-switching between daylight colour images and clear black and white images in zero light.

The camera is only capable of streaming a MPEG-4 compressed stream.

With a faster frame rate, MPEG-4 mode is better for smooth motion but image quality will be reduced is there is a lot of activity in the image.

The camera supports the following resolutions and will run at 30 frames per second across them all:

640×480 pixels (VGA)

320×240 pixels

160×120 pixels

4. Image Quality

The camera comes with a fixed lens. Focal length: f=2.5, Aperture: F2.0mm.

Viewing angles: Horizontal= 53.4 degrees Vertical= 40.0 degrees

Sensor: 1/4-inch CMOS sensor, approx: 310,000 pixels

The camera is designed for night vision. As a result there is no inclusion of a infrared cut-out filter meaning that the image processor will take in light from the higher and lower end frequencies. What this means in real terms is that colour reproduction will not be as natural as a true daylight camera. It also suffers quality loss under flourescent lighting. Waves can be clearly seen moving over the image and colour reproduction changes dramatically. Here are example images taken from the Y-cam Black during the day with flourescent lights on and off:

Flourescent Lighting On

Flourescent Lighting Turned Off

This would not necessarily affect the average home user as most homes do not use flourescent lighting but this could have an impact on small businesses. It should be noted though that this is not a fault but rather an intentional decision made by the manufacturers. The camera is designed and sold as an infrared night vision camera and its daylight viewing is more than adequate for most applications, but it really comes into its own at night and in darkness.

5. Going Dark

The camera has 30 built-in infrared LEDs which illuminate a scene at a distance of up to 12m. The camera will detect the light levels of its surrounding environment and automatically switch to night vision when it falls to a certain level (this is the default setting, manual switching is also available).

We were rather impressed by the quality of the infrared image from a camera at this price point. See below example of the same scene at 9am compared to 3am:

9am Snapshot – daylight

3am Snapshot – complete darkness

The infrared capability of the camera can provide useful images, and even facial recognition, in environments which are in complete darkness.

6. Viewing Technologies and Compatibility

As with the Y-cam White the camera is ActiveX based meaning that it will work in Microsoft Internet Explorer only (versions 5.5+). It will run on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. The camera does not provide support for MAC or Linux platforms, or non-IE browsers.
The manufacturer has also told us they are working on multi-platform capability for their cameras so as soon as we have more information on that we will test it and report on it here.

7. Audio

The Y-cam Black also supports 1-way audio. This allows you to hear what is going on in the camera’s vicinity using the built-in microphone. The quality is adequate. The microphone is not overly sensitive, especially at distance but it is suitable for applications such as baby monitoring.

8. Alarm Management

The camera can trigger events based on Motion Detection or periodical send and transfer images by email or to an FTP server.

Additionally the camera can also record movie clips with audio for storage on a local hard drive. These can be triggered by motion detection or manual trigger.

Adjustments can be made to the sensitivity to the motion detection and up to four exclusion zones can also be set up to help eliminate false detections.

9. Conclusion

We feel with the inclusion of infrared LEDs the Y-cam Black offers something which other cameras don’t at this price point. This camera is ideal for home security or applications such as baby monitoring or keeping an eye on elderly relatives. It would work well as a security solution for small businesses too, giving peace of mind that anyone on the premises at night would be clearly caught.

The infrared capability is impressive. We found that we could not only see people in complete darkness but also had a clear enough image to recognise faces over a distance of approx. 6m. Clearly impressive for such a competatively priced camera.

On the downside an infrared security camera would benefit from having useful recording software to store and archive events. There are ways to record video clips or transfer images but these lack the structure and organisation when it comes to playback, something you would find in a dedicated recording application and something which is really pretty essential. The camera currently doesn’t have recording software and is not compatible in leading applications such as Milestone, however the manufacturer has told us they are in the beta testing stages of a recording application which will benefit the camera greatly.

The image quality isn’t as good during the day and quite bad under flourescent lights. This is actually a design decision by the manufacturer. It would have been nice to have an auto-switching IR cutout filter but this would probably raise the price and the camera would lose it competitive price point. The image is perfectly adequate during the day since the main focus of the camera is its night vision capability.

Another minor point is discretion. There is the option to turn off the power/access LED on the front of the camera which is a common feature found in home security IP cameras allowing the camera to be placed covertly and undetected during the night by possible intruders. The only problem is that the type of LEDs used in the Y-cam black glow red and obviously cannot be disabled without losing your infrared illumination. This makes the camera noticable in the dark rendering the previous function pointless. It’s a small point but one worth mentioning.

The Y-cam Black IP Camera is ideal for home/small business security and we have no problem in promoting the use of the Y-cam Black in these areas.

10. Links

Cameras from Y-cam:

Y-cam Black compact wireless IP camera infrared night vision with 1-way audio
Y-cam White compact wireless IP camera with 1-way audio

UPDATE: 10th August 2009 – This camera now comes as standard with a 3m power cable.