The IT Nerd

This week, I got my hands on a rather interesting network camera to play with. Made by Foscam, the FI890W is a wireless (802.11 B/G) network camera that is a bunch of things going for it. First of all, it has point and tilt capabilities which means that instead of just being stuck pointing in one direction like some of the other cameras that I have reviewed, you can point and tilt it so that you can see what you need to see in a 300 degree range and a 120 tilt angle. It doesn’t zoom, but I don’t think you’ll miss that ability.

Second, it has night vision via a bunch of IR lights that give you up to 8 meters of night vision. I tried it and it’s actually pretty good. In fact it’s much better than the Asante camera that I am currently using. It has motion detection, but it’s very simple in manner. It is triggered by anything that moves in it’s field of vision. Compare that to the Asante or Axis cameras that I’ve reviewed which allow you to select specific areas to monitor. At first I thought that this was a failing of the Foscam, but it’s not. It makes it simple to set up for novice users. Speaking of set up, it’s easy for someone who has experience with these sorts of cameras to set it up on a network and make it work outside your network via a web browser. Novice users may have a bit of a challenge on their hands, but they should be able to muddle through using the included software and documentation. If that doesn’t help you, there’s a decent array of documentation on their website that should be able to help. I should note that the camera has a resolution of 640×480 which was another thing that I thought was lame. But the picture quality was shockingly good. Clearly Foscam got their hands on some good optics.

You can do remote viewing via a web page or by a an app for your iPhone or Android phone. To test that, I used a Samsung Galaxy Note and a app called Foscam Viewer Lite which worked very well. For those of you who simply want to get an e-mail alert. it does support sending an e-mail with pictures attached.

The best thing about this camera is the price. You get all of this for $99 Canadian or $109 US. That’s an impressive price for a camera that has these capabilities.

Bottom line: If you need a security camera, take a good hard look at the Foscam FI8910W network camera. It’s a very capable camera at an excellent price that’s relatively easy to set up. I think you’ll find that from a price/performance standpoint, it will be hard to beat.