Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic BB-HCM371A Outdoor Wireless Network Camera

I looked for a long time for a remote camera to keep an eye on a vacation residence. Reviews of other similar cameras like the Toshiba IK-WB11A were spotty at best especially when using in wireless mode. Panasonic cameras seemed to get good reliability reviews, so when an outdoor wireless-G came out I decided to give it a try. I had some difficulty getting the ports forwarded through my router. The directions are pretty sparse when it comes to setting up your router. I guess there is a fair variability in how each different router is set up. Once that problem was solved it has been rock solid. In the 4 months I have had it running, I only had to reset it once, after a 3 day power failure. Actually, I think it was the router, not the camera that needed to be reset, but I reset everything. It does everything it is advertised to do although I don't use the audio feature. The motion detection feature works better than other webcam security software that I have tried.

I purchased this camera because I didn't want to run Ethernet cable to my router. If this is not a problem for you, I would recommend you check out the BB-HCM311A. Note that with the BB-HCM371A, you still have to run wire for power, which sort of defeats the wireless concept.

Be warned that you still need an ethernet cable to plug into your router for set up.

Speaking of setup, if you don't know your network settings, this camera will be a pain to setup. For example, if you don't know the IP to your DNS, you're in trouble. Fortunately for me, I managed to configure it successfully and I'm no system administrator.

Physical installation was straight forward. I mounted my camera high and I was afraid I was going to drop it while threading it to the mount. Panasonic really should have come up with a safety system where you can tether the camera while you screw it in place.

My biggest gripe is the web-based software. It's feature-rich, but I cannot capture images the way I like. For example, I cannot acquire a time lapse movie of an overnight shot. I either get the first few seconds or the last few seconds. If a prowler saunters into camera shot at 2:00AM, I wouldn't see him. There's also a bug when you play the time-lapse motion image. Once you play it once, you cannot play it again. :-(

Also, downloaded images are in PCN form. What the heck kind of image format is that?

Another gripe is that night vision isn't great. In this day and age, a camera like this should perform better in terms of night vision.

I had first purchased a couple of Panasonic BL-30C wireless web cams to keep an eye on a vacation house that is far away from us. I wanted to put one outside too and decided to give this one a try against the weather. It was a bit harder to set up than the BL-30c, but after a few trial and errors and some persistence, I managed to get this one going too. The picture quality is very impressive and the audio is a nice optional feature! Very clear viewing in the daytime, and good night mode too. It has been reliable, and I am very pleased I bought it.

I've used this camera for the better part of a year now. I've used it in a variety of locations and conditions. It's presently mounted outdoors and transmitting wirelessly to a router sitting indoors 340' away. I use dynamic DNS to access the camera remotely via DSL. The framerate is decent, but still-picture quality (clarity) could definitely be better -- especially when the subject is moving. The motion detection is good and triggers reliably to upload images to an FTP site. The camera is very configurable, but best-suited for the tech-savvy. Plus, it's evident that a lot of the instructions written into the camera firmware were done by a non-native English-speaking individual. I've successfully viewed the camera remotely via my Motorola Q. Sound quality from the camera is very good. I can hear the frogs chirping in a nearby riverbed right now.
For what it's worth, I also own a very expensive Axis camera. The bottom line is that, although this camera has room for improvement, it still comes pretty close to justifying its cost.

I am extremely unhappy with this camera. On the surface, the camera looks great--it offers SD recording, wireless connectivity, and remote management. But this is a really poorly made camera with poor supporting software. Firstly, it took me 3 nights trying to set this up--and I'm a long time techie. I followed the directions EXACTLY... got wired connection working fine... but the wireless was terrible. The camera kept telling me it wouldn't connect, even though I had all the settings correct. I even reset my wireless router to setup the most basic wireless LAN, and it still didn't work. Then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason it worked. Garbage. I still don't know why it worked.

The remote management was interesting and I like the fact that it let me control and move the camera remotely. It also lets you setup specific times to allow "triggers"... but the trigger software is spotty. The sensitivity controls for when the triggers set off didn't work well at all and it basically capture everything or nothing. Axis has much better event management software.

Finally, the picture quality is TERRIBLE. It claims that it can record up to VGA at 12 frames/sec, but it doesn't even COME close to that... at VGA it records maybe 1 or 2 frames/sec at best. Even at that quality there are noticeable artifacts and blurriness. I researched all the other cameras at this price level and amazingly this seemed that it had the best specs, but I suppose there's no subsitution for first hand experience. This is a terrible camera... I ended up buying the Axis 207w. It doesn't have movement capabilities, but for half the price, it's picture quality is 2x better and setup was a breeze.