TRENDnet Megapixel Wireless N Pan, Tilt, Zoom Network Surveillance Camera with 2-Way Audio and Night Vision, TV-IP672WI (White)

TRENDnet got it mostly right with this amazing camera. I have had several IP cameras over the years and this one is the best of them by a wide margin. There is very little to complain about this camera and the firmware interface built into it. If you are already familiar with IP cameras and how they are configured, you will have no problem learning these settings in a few hours or playing with them and experimenting to see the results. If you are new to IP cameras, it will take some learning to configure but that's true of all IP cameras and some are horribly difficult to configure for newbies.This new class of camera uses selectable video codecs and you can have up to four profiles with different resolutions and codecs in use so the viewed can select whatever profile works best for them as they are viewing from a browser. These newer codecs make a HUGE difference in the usability of this and similar cameras. With the old MJPEG (Motion JPEG) codec, you were limited to around 5 - 10 fps (frames per second) regardless of your connection speed. While this camera still supports MJPEG, you now have the choice of selecting the more highly compressed (and thus faster) H.264 and MPEG4 codecs. These newer codecs can stream video up to 30 fps! They can do it at up to 1280 x 800 resolution too! H.264 provides slighly superior video but MPEG4 is more compressed and can provide good video at lower speeds than H.264 so it's a trade-off as to which to use, depending on your upload speeds and your viewers download speeds.Furthermore, this camera has built-in Wi-Fi 802.11n on the 2.5 GHz band, which I found fast enough in my small two story home, for the signal to reach almost anywhere in the house and provide 1280 x 800, H.264, 4 Mbps streaming video and audio. Oh and yes, of course, this camera provides two-way audio as well. I found the mic sensitive enough if set to the highest sensitivity (100) but I haven't had a chance to try the audio line out so I can send audio to the device.The infra-red LEDs are also adequate to illuminate a completely dark room for an area between 15 and 20 feet in front of the camera, but not evenly, which I presume is typical of small cameras with LEDs built into them. You really would need a separate infra-red LED flood light if you really wanted to illuminate a larger area or if you wanted brighter video.Lastly, I found the remote motorized panning to work very well and very quickly. There are presets you can use to pan specific areas over and over in "patrol" mode, which can be very handy if you want to use this for surveillance.What you should be aware of with this camera:1. This is not a professional camera and is intended for indoor use only at temperatures above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Also obviously, it isn't a dome camera so it is vulnerable to physical attack more so than a protected camera if you are using it for surveillance.2. It has a fixed-focus lens but I didn't find that to be a problem since it has a fairly large focus range and most people are going to use it to focus on distant objects like a room.3. This camera does NOT have a wide-angle lens. It has a rather narrow field of view, which means it won't be the best camera to use for some applications. Because of the narrow field of view, you will have to pan the camera to get a broader area of viewable coverage. If that isn't a problem for your application, then it doesn't matter. If it is, you may be better off getting a fixed camera with the widest angle of view possible.4. It has a built-in micro-SD card slot, but I find that not useful for surveillance, since all your important video is then on a card that is in the camera and the camera is vulnerable. It is safer to stream and record video elsewhere. For non-surveillance use, it is fine.5. Although this camera can stream video directly to an external hard drive, if you want to stream based on motion detection or full-time whenever the camera is turned on, it MUST be an NAS network drive or a Linux Samba network drive, although the firmware incorrectly indicates it must be a Samba drive. This is probably because Samba is a protocol supported on Linux and I strongly suspect this camera is using a Linux variant as the OS (operating system). Most home users will not have an NAS network drive, although you can certainly purchase one relatively inexpensively. I have not had time to try this yet.6. You can also record directly to any hard drive attached to the viewing computer, but only by manually clicking in the "REC" button at the BOTTOM of the web interface after you preset the folder by clicking on the Folder icon at the bottom of the web interface. The identical looking "REC" icon on the upper left side of the web interface (next to the motion detection icon) is in actuality, not a button at all but a record INDICATOR that only comes on when you record to an NAS network drive. This is confusing at first and THE MANUAL IS ACTUALLY WRONG ON THIS POINT.7. It has a very nice feature which allows you to set up an outgoing email address that includes a ten second video and audio clip, anytime there is motion detected (actually anytime there is motion, on a schedule, or always). It worked perfectly for me and allows you to use any standard SMTP mail server with any port. I used one of my Gmail accounts for mine.8. Lastly, the user manual is better than most I've seen with other cameras (especially the cheap no-name Chinese imports) but still lacks detailed explanations for some settings and some functionality.9. The camera comes with TRENnetVIEWPro software (although you will have to download this updated and re-branded version from their website, since my CD-ROM has an older version). This is professional grade multi-camera monitoring and recording software that runs as an app on Windows (not sure about Macs). Be warned that I found this software to be rather confusing and difficult to configure. It has many buried settings that are difficult to find and I found the user manual that it comes with to be helpful but still not adequate to help quickly set this software up correctly. If you plan on using this software, especially with multiple cameras, I would plan on spending many hours configuring and testing it before you get it right. One of the main advantages of this software (other than being able to view multiple cameras in one interface) is that it has more flexible video recording options and can record motion and live video directly to any hard drive attached to the computer it is running on.Overall, this is an excellent camera and well worth the street price of around $200. I was very tempted to give this a 5-star rating but held back for some relatively minor glitches in the firmware, the difficult to use TRENDnetVIEWPro software, and the less than stellar user manuals.UPDATE:I've had the camera running 24x7 for 7 days now and it did lock up just once. I'll have to see if this was a fluke (probably) or something that will recur. I was able to reboot it remotely (which would be critical if you weren't physically near the camera) and it recovered. By the way, this is an example where having the camera use a fixed IP address is convenient because when it rebooted I knew what the IP was. If you have it set to DHCP and it reboots, it will get a new IP from your router and you will either have to guess what the new IP is or go into your router and view the IP address assigned. I've also had it recording to a local hard drive for up to 10 hours continuously each of the 7 days with no problems at all. It very cleverly, records files in one minute chunks that are date and time stamped so its easy to see which one minute file you want to review. Lots of files but worth it. I suspect it's also more reliable to record in one minute chunks.

Obtaining this TrendNet camera is my first foray into a home security camera and so far it has been pretty impressive -- it does a lot for the price. While I haven't had it for long, here are my initial thoughts:**PROS**-PoE. I went with PoE (TV-IP672PI) over WiFi because a) either way you will need a cable for power and b) if part of the purpose of the cam is for security, I'd rather have a cable over a WiFi signal "hanging out there" for some bored hacker to try and tap into, even if it is encrypted. Since I only have this one camera for now, I am using the  TRENDnet Power Over Ethernet (PoE) Injector TPE-103I  which is working out perfectly.-Night vision. The NV on this camera is working out really well and adequately covers a large living room + dining room. Keep in mind that when NV kicks in, the camera automatically switches over to black and white. When the IR LEDs are on, they will emit a dim red glow.-PTZ. Pan, Tilt, and Zoom. It's still fun to play with PTZ on this camera and you can do it from a web browser or your mobile TrendNet SecurView Pro app. The mobile apps are a bit different for Android vs. iPhone, but both allow you do pan and tilt (zoom seems to only work on the iPhone). Note that Internet Explorer seems a bit more friendly to operating the camera's web interface as compared to Chrome or Firefox. And yeah, when remotely viewing the cam with your mobile app the video is choppy and there's a delay when you pan or tilt, but that is not surprising.-Overall large viewing area. They call this a "megapixel" camera with 1280 x 800. Those of us familiar with marketing for camera phones and regular cameras know that more megapixels does not mean a higher quality image. While the image quality for this camera is pretty decent, it isn't superb, so what the megapixel bit means here is that you get a larger overall image for a given area. In addition to that, because the camera can pan and tilt, that just adds to the possible viewing area. Overall I find the image quality for both color and B&W modes to be perfectly acceptable.-Realistic color. Some low-end cameras that have built-in night vision don't have an IR cut filter or leave the IR LEDs on all the time, resulting in really bad color accuracy. For example, some cameras with NV will show green objects as greyish pink. This is not the case with this camera. When it's in color/day mode, colors are more or less what you expect.-2-way audio. This is a pretty fun feature. The camera has a built-in mic and you can hear audio from the area the camera is installed in from the mobile apps and via the web browser interface. I haven't tried hooking up external speakers yet though.-Onboard micro SD storage. If you add a micro SD card to the camera, you don't need to leave a PC on all the time and can still have local access to videos or snapshots recorded by the camera. I confirmed that this camera supports micro SD cards with up to 32GB of capacity.-Overall tons of features. I won't go into it all here, but I like how there's a lot of options. You can configure the camera to email you video or snapshots, you can turn off the fairly bright status LEDs, there's an external privacy button right on the camera to point it downward when you're home, etc. The more flexibility, the better (usually)!**CONS**-While the web configuration utility on the camera has been mostly frustration free, it seems there's a bug where the camera will stop sending video when certain options are saved and you have to reboot it to resume the video. I put in a help ticket with TrendNet to get feedback on that.-When the camera's NV mode is set to "Auto", its threshold for switching from daytime/color mode to firing up the IR LEDs seems too small. In other words it switches over to NV mode too easily (e.g., room gets darker with passing clouds) and as far as I know, you can't adjust the threshold. You can set the NV mode to "manual" but then you have to turn it on and off via the web utility (at least there's that).-If you want to configure DDNS (Dynamic DNS) on the camera itself, it seems you can only use DynDNS which is no longer a free service. DynDNS is not really expensive, but you should be able to put any DDNS provider you want in there; I have no idea why they would restrict that. Most modern home routers also have a DDNS option and hopefully have more DDNS provider options than this camera, so the workaround is to configure this on your router instead.**OTHER OBSERVATIONS**-This camera has a manual focus dial as opposed to an auto focus lens, which seems to be common as all the home security cameras with IR night vision that I researched had manual focus only. As mentioned previously, my camera is covering a fairly large room and all areas within the room have perfectly acceptable focus, therefore the lack of auto focus isn't an issue as far as I'm concerned.-If you want to use a gmail account to send you the email alerts, you'll need to configure the following settings on the camera: smtp[dot]gmail[dot]com for the SMTP Mail Server option, port 465, and SSL-TLS for the Use SSL-TLS option. Then, if your camera has a static IP address (recommended), you'll also need to fill out the Optional Primary DNS LAN setting on the camera, otherwise the camera can't resolve the SMTP server address to an IP address. You can get the Primary DNS IP address from the device settings option of your home router.-If you want to use the Synchronize with NTP Server option on the camera so you never have to worry about setting the time and date, you can use the IP address of your router (providing it has the NTP server option enabled -- most home routers should have this feature), or you can point the camera to a public NTP server such as pool[dot]ntp[dot]org. If you use the latter option or anything with a Fully Qualifed Domain Name (e.g., example[dot]timeserver[dot]com) you'll again need to ensure you have the Primary DNS field filled out. Again, if your camera is configured to get an IP address via DHCP (not recommended), you probably don't have to worry about this Primary DNS field.-You can "draw" motion areas with this camera, meaning you can configure the camera to only trigger recording when it senses motion within an area you define. Right now I'm not sure my camera is adhering to my pre-defined area too well, but I'm still working with that.-Aside from doing PTZ from the mobile apps, you can save snapshots to your phone, as well as send and receive audio.-If you manually set the time and date on the camera or copy it from your PC, the time and date will be lost when the camera reboots or is power cycled. Best to use NTP server option to avoid this.-Opened a help ticket with TrendNet support for a pre-sales question and got a response within 24 hours, which is promising for potential future issues.-When you mount the night vision version of the camera to the ceiling, note that it has a smiley face :)Overall I'm fairly pleased with this camera's performance and options. Hopefully it also proves to be durable and I'll update this review accordingly should there be any significant changes in my opinion. I would recommend this camera, especially if you only require just one, or maybe up to a few, indoor cameras.***Update 1 - December 6, 2012-I have now tested audio output from the camera. Connected a small, battery-powered speaker to the 3.5mm jack and used the microphone feature from my phone. There was a delay in sending audio from my phone of course, but it worked more or less as expected. Fooled the dogs, but not the wife.-The bug I mentioned where the camera stops sending video after applying certain changes to the camera via the web interface is not yet resolved. When this issue happens there will be no video output to any browser or via the mobile apps. It's not really a deal-breaking issue by any means, more of an annoyance, but still working with TrendNet tech support to figure it out.-While DynDNS no longer seems to offer free DDNS, no-ip[dot]com does. I'd check to make sure your router supports them though, because it's not an option on the camera itself.

Die Kamera ist technisch gesehen wirklich top.Vor allem der stabile WLan Empfang hebt diese Kamera hervor. Da kann sich DLink, Instar und Foscam noch eine Scheibe abschneiden. Die Bildqualität im Megapixel Bereich ist auch hervorragend. Die Nachtsichtfähigkeit ist auch sehr, sehr gut. Der Raum erscheint in allen Details, obwohl vollkommene Dunkelheit herscht. Die Kamera lässt sich sehr schön mit einer Synology DS412 und der dazugehörigen Software "Surveillance Station" bedienen.Es können auch feste Positionen eingespeichert werden, die dann bei Bewegungserkennung "abgefahren" werden.Das verbaute Mikrofon ist auch sehr gut. Auch wenn in einem anderen Raum gesprochen wird, kann man die Gespräche noch verstehen solange die Tür geöffnet ist in dem Raum in dem auch die Kamera steht.Die hohe Zuverlässigkeit, die einfache Bedienbarkeit und vor allem die Features machen diese Kamera als idealen Überwacher für Große Räume.Ich kann diese Kamera jedem Synology Benutzer nur ans Herz legen, da hier einfach alles stimmt.

Auch wenn die Auflösung nicht mehr dem standard entspricht, ist diese Kamera nach wie vor bei mir im Einsatz. Mittlerweile eher um Sachen zu beobachten, beim Heimwerken. Zum Beispiel, wenn ich mal wieder ein Kabel durch ein Leerrohr schiebe um zu sehen, ob ich auch durch bin.

Habe schon ähnliche Cams von Allnet und D-Link gehabt. Diese ist definitiv die beste Ausführung. Prima Auflösung, gute App für's iPhone/iPad (ProView). Ähnlich gut funktioniert auch die (ebenfalls kostenlose) App uCamPro. Mit der Cam kann ich schwenken, zoomen (nur digital) und über das eingebaute Mikro hören. Klare Empfehlung!

Bild ist gut. Software funktioniert, ist aber etwas angestaubt. Das ist für mich aber kein echtes Kriterium, weil ich die Kamera in einer Überwachungssofteware integriere. POE geht, Kamera lässt sich mit Motoren ausrichten (gemächlich, nicht schnell), Bild und Nachtsicht (im Nahbereich) gut. Kann ich empfehlen.

....und tut das was sie soll....das Motorengeräusch ist etwas lauter, aber es soll ja keine Spionagekamera sein sondern nur ungebetene Gäste aufzeichen..und das klappt sehr gut...EInrichtung ist einfach und im Zusammenspiel mit einer DS1512+ ein guter Partner