My Axis security camera which was instrumental in alerting me to a break in almost two years ago decided to bite the bullet. So I went looking for a new one. I finally settled on the Asante Voyager I as it had a couple things that my Axis didn’t have. First, it has 6 IR LEDs in it to give it a form of night vision. The catch is that it’s only good for about 5 to 6 feet away from the camera. Second, it does up to 1280X1024 resolution. My previous Axis did half that. As a result, the images are pretty clear and sharp. Not only that, I have a bit more of a view of my condo. The kicker was the price, it was under $200 Canadian which is dirt cheap compared to the Axis. So I plunked my hard earned dollars down for one.
Setup wasn’t difficult and I was able to get it going quickly. But one thing that I should note is that if you want to see the camera from the Internet, you need to open two ports on your router. Both port 80 and 554 need to be open as it uses Quicktime for streaming. Other than that, it wasn’t hard to get it working. The camera is easy to configure and in my case, I have it set up to e-mail images to my Blackberry if anybody comes through my door as it has motion detection. Though you can also record to a SAMBA based device like a NAS device as well. If you’re interested in sound, it has a built in microphone as well as a connection for a speaker so that you can do two way audio.
While it does have support for 3GPP so you can see video on a smartphone that supports 3GPP, Asante only has apps for the iPhone and HTC phones. So I guess it sucks to be me as I have a Blackberry. One of the things is that I could do with the Axis is to arm and disarm it via my Blackberry before I step into my condo using the Blackberry web browser. So far, I have been unable to do that with the Asante. That means that I have to run into my condo, log into one of my computers, log into the camera and disarm it. That’s a bit of a #fail. Asante needs step up to the plate with Blackberry support seeing as there’s so many of them out there. While I’m on the subject of arming and disarming the camera, accessing the camera via a web browser is really slow. Even over a gigabit network with seperate 802.11N and G networks (the camera does G), it’s really slow. I’m not sure what Asante did to make it so slow, but that’s another #fail.
I had some questions about the camera, so I had to use Asante’s tech support via e-mail. I got same day responses to my queries which is good. But if you want to call them, they only have limited tech service hours that are only available Monday through Friday (although their tech support number is toll free). They also have some basic troubleshooting info on their website and they have some more advanced documents that seem to be for different versions of the Voyager I. That’s going to be problematic for less technically savvy users. If I were them I’d adding their level tech support to the same list that has Blackberry support on it.
So, would I recommend the Voyager I? It’s a low cost solution for those who want a video based home security solution. The resolution that it is capable of makes up for its shortcomings. The bottom line is that it’s worth considering, but you may want to cross shop it against something from Axis just in case.