IP Cameras / Network Cameras For Security - Using Your Own PC

A family of camera devices - small, wireless and equipped with motion and heat detection sensors - is getting increasingly popular in security use, particularly in homes and small businesses. Unlike CCTV cameras, these cameras need not be connected to a bank of monitors at a central place. Nor does it create a cable tangle to hook the cameras to the monitors. You do not need somebody monitoring these 24x7.

These cameras leverage the benefit of the Internet to give you the flexibility of monitoring a secure area from wherever you are. They also have the ability to send clips and still shots periodically. Events that trigger tramsmisson can be defined by the user. The events could be time based, on detection of motion, or on detection of warm bodies (body heat). A typical configuration used is a router that communicates with a DSL modem on the one hand and communicates wirelessly with the camera devices. More than one camera may be used. The purpose of this article is to look at the functionalities required for this class of devices and how they meet your security needs. We will look at two representative products and the implications of the specifications offered by them. The representative cameras are Panasonic BL-C131 and Trendnet TV-IP422W. Implications of the specs are discussed below.

• Networking/ communication specifications
• Security specifications
• Camera specifications
• Video/Picture specifications
• Power specifications
• Physical specifications

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The cameras should support communication with the Internet well, and there should not be any limitations that'll restrict use in the future. Standards-based wireless networking support is an absolute must and typically IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g support is provided. Wireless networking provides flexibility in setting up the cameras easily. The video clips and the still shots are sent as e-mails or they can be transferred to a FTP server automatically. The camera uses Internet Protocol (IP) stack. IP version 4 or IPv4 is the most common implementation over the Internet. Slowly, the more recent version IPv6 is coming into effect. So cameras that implement both IPv4 and IPv6 are going to have an advantage over time. You'll need dynamic DNS support. This may be provided by the product manufacturers or third party providers.

Typically the cameras should have Ethernet connections of the 10/100 Mbps twisted pair variety. That lets you connect through your existing LAN wiring, if any. Secondly, you can use this connection for initial set up through a PC. So, wherever your monitoring location is, you'll need to have a PC that will read the e-mails or download the clips/shots from the FTP server and allow you to view the video/images. Downloads to mobiles devices are also available.

Wireless communication is vulnerable to eavesdropping and the pictures can be picked up while being transmitted. Wireless network encryption secures the link between the cameras and the broadband router, thus securing your network. This should be standards based and the applicable standards are IEEE 802.11b/g. These protocols support the high speed data transfer required for digital video, which is a high rate data stream. The b version of the specification supports 11 Mbps and the g version supports 54 Mbps data rates at 2.4 GHz frequencies. Cameras that support stronger encryptions are going to be more secure. Cameras that support more protocols are able to give you the choice of picking the right encryption algorithm from the basket available.

Next: On page two of this article, we look at Camera Specifications, Video/Picture Specifications, Power Specifications, Physical Dimensions, Comparison of Specifications, and our conclusion.