The IP Camera and IP CCTV Blog

It’s official; the invasion of the iPads has begun.

Actually, who are we kidding? The invasion is already over and Apple have moved on to their well deserved victory lap, their latest innovation having taken the world by storm in what seems like the blink of an eye.

But what impact will it have on the IP Camera industry? How well do products from the likes of Axis, Panasonic and Y-cam interact with the world’s latest ‘must-have’ gadget?

To find out, we looked at cameras from these companies using our own shiny new iPad (any excuse!) Here is what we found:

We began with the Axis M3011 and found that we immediately lost our snapshot and full screen options, the latter of which could have been particularly useful on a screen as small as the iPad’s, though admittedly, turning the iPad to landscape provided a perfectly adequate viewing window.

This exodus of functions wasn’t entirely surprising as the iPad doesn’t support the camera’s ActiveX, or Java requirement for its advanced features, leaving it without the software necessary to perform most of them, but knowing this was scant consolation, as we were left with only the live image itself and had to open a separate window and make adjustments without being able to see the image, which made things a little trickier.

The Y-cam Knight we tested next was no improvement; once again all features were lost and, once again, we found ourselves having to make adjustments in a separate window. The camera’s specialised ‘mobile’ site didn’t fare much better, offering only a static image updated every few seconds.

Eventually however, we found a user interface which did translate well onto the iPad; the Panasonic BB-HCM511CE (and, it follows, all other BB- and BL- range cameras) allowed for extensive control of the camera, allowing us to toggle backlighting, resolution, compression rate, and image quality. Of course some features were still lost, such as the digital zoom, but overall the camera was far easier to interact with and offered far more comprehensive control.

Admittedly some of the controls, particularly the ‘scan’ controls, having been designed for a mouse, can be a bit fiddly on the iPad’s small touch-screen but in most cases there are drop down menus available to get you around this problem, though the iPad’s MultiTouch pinch-to-zoom capability makes zooming in to areas on the screen easy.

Unfortunately, this generally user-friendly interface was let down slightly by the display itself. The image was penned into one corner at the top of the screen and we had to adjust the resolution manually to 640×480 pixels and turn the iPad landscape again before we could really make out detail. Hardly a burden but it’s still work that the other cameras don’t ask you to do. It’s also worth noting that, while the full screen option is retained, it doesn’t really add a great deal. This ‘feature’ behaves in the same way on the iPad as it does on any desktop browser, so no loss there.

On the whole though the signs here are encouraging; the iPad’s barely been with us ten minutes and already Axis and Panasonic have shown that it is possible to transfer both image quality and a user-friendly interface over to it. All we need now is someone to put it all together, and that, surely, is only a matter of time.

In fact, we’re aiming to be that someone. Our Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) product already works on the iPhone and iPad and we’re building an iPad-specific interface as well.

Today, Network Webcams announces the launch of SecurityStation, its own Alerts & Recording Platform (ARP). Designed with the user in mind, SecurityStation makes viewing and recording from IP cameras as easy as using a website.

The new service can be accessed using all common browsers and does away with the need for recording devices or software of any kind. All a user need is a camera and an Internet connection, SecurityStation does the rest.

Secure, offsite remote servers managed by Network Webcams store the data captured from users’ cameras. Via www.MySecurityStation.com users have instant access to their event recordings, live camera feeds and system control settings.

Frank Crouwel, Managing Director at Network Webcams said, “We expect that SecurityStation will become a great success and a market leader amongst other Alerts & Recording Platforms (ARPs). The fact that the service is fully web-based and is accessible from anywhere on demand makes it easy to use for anybody, and this makes it such a powerful product. It will open up the use of IP video to a much wider market.”

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It’s been a long time coming but ONVIF, the IP Video standards-setting collaboration between Axis, Bosch and Sony, is finally running and available to join. We’ll be following and, hopefully, contributing to the project and we fully support the standardisation of network video.

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We receive questions about IP cameras and lighting on a daily basis. We thought that this post may help many of you who are specifying lighting for use with IP cameras and are looking for guidance. This is a concise guide dealing with the basics only.

No light, no picture

The first thing to remember is that no camera will work in the dark. For a camera to provide a picture some form of light will be required. This can be either natural sun light or artificial light. Artificial light will be a requirement when the camera is to be operated indoors or at night.

Artificial light

We separate between three forms of artificial light:

• Standard interior lighting and external (flood) lighting
• White light
• Infra-red light

When designing a camera system that requires artificial light, the following advantages and disadvantages should be kept in mind:

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We took delivery of an ACTi CAM5230HP network camera for testing. The ACTi CAM5230HP is a static MPEG-4 real-time streaming day/night camera supporting a host of features, so let’s take a closer look at them: Read more

So you’re looking for an IP camera, but you want make sure that you can view it through your spanking new Core 2 Duo 13″ MacBook.

Thankfully, your options are many. Read more