Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys WVC54GCA Webcam 640x480 802.11G Wireless Internet Home Monitoring Camera

This item has been a nightmare! Before I purchased this camera, I contacted Linksys sales and asked the following questions: 1. Does it have the capability to record activity to the hard drive of a computer? 2. Is it wireless? 3. Does it need the internet to function? 4. Does the camera have "motion detection capability"? 5. Can the file be copied to media and be viewed on another computer?

With the exception of 3, the answer to all of the above was YES! An internet connection is not needed unless one wants to view video activity at a remote location. However, a separate router is required. Connect the camera to the router and the router to the computer. Once this is done, unplug the camera and if the router is wireless, the camera can be viewed and recorded.

After receiving the unit, I had a tech at Linksys help in the setup. Everything seemed to work ok, but as I began to make certain all was recording as hoped, nothing was available to view. After many hours of consulting with Linksys tech's I was finally sent to the next level in Irvine, CA. After waiting for two days, I finally received a call. We began working on the recorded issue. Finally after three days, the tech said the camera was faulty so I returned it. Amazon.com was excellent and sent me a new camera via second day. The new camera arrived, and I performed a new install. Still I couldn't get Motion Video to record. Many many more hours and I paid $9.99 to Linksys for online help. Still no resolution, but guess what: they kept my money even though they "guaranteed" resolution or a refund. Finally, I was able to talk to the Irvine tech (only after calling the commercial number in Irvine and asking to talk to the President of Linksys). Turns out my emails to him were going to his junk mail. He couldn't come up with the answer either so he installed a camera and the software to find out what the problem was. He had some of the same problems which I encountered, so he went to the engineering department for help. Turns out we had a check mark in a box that precluded proper saving of video. Also turns out that this camera can only record 30 seconds of activity, BUT there is a field that allows for a "0" (zero instead of one or more minutes) which is the amount of time between detected events. That seems to correct the problem. I've had it functional for three days now, and it appears that the unit and software are functional for my purposes. Also, the user manual doesn't tell that essentially the camera software is, to a great degree, useless. That the Camera Utility software is the most important and works the best. It's easy to think that setting up the camera software works in conjunction with the Utility, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If my email address is available, I'd be glad to help anyone who is having problems with their camera. I can't even begin to estimate my time spent on this, but I've been at it since mid September. It's now October 31. 'Spose there is any significance to that? GOOD LUCK!

I was looking for an economic wireless network camera. I got much more than I expected with this camera.

If you are anything above a Lv 3 techie/nerd class, and have ever setup a home wireless access point (with WEP/WPA encryption and know anything about SSIDs) or an DSL/Cable router then you'll be able to set this up via the built in web interface within mere minutes. If you do not have these skills or if you normally do, but fail your saving throw versus new technologies, you'll want to get that neighbor kid to come over and do it for you.

I setup a static IP address on this unit (due to all the DHCP lease issues I saw in other reviews) and in wireless mode I have NEVER had it drop off and not be able to connect to it. It has worked flawlessly for over a week in various positions around my house.

I live in a 2 story house my linksys wireless access point is in my basement, but I can put this camera anyplace in my house and it will connect to the wireless so I haven't encountered any issues with range (within reason, people).

The picture is 640x480 (or smaller if that's your desire) and is decent.

Things I found to be relevant:
Initial setup must be done with a wired ethernet connection.
This unit is better than it's cheaper counterpart, the WVC54GC.
This unit does do WPA2
This unit can be VIEWED in Firefox on Linux and Windows and Safari on the iPhone
Motion detection must be setup in IE or the Linksys Camera App that is included on the CD.

I like this camera. For the price there is no competitor. I am purchasing 3-4 more of these in the next month.

I bought this camera about 2 weeks ago. The video quality is outstanding. It took me about 10 minutes to have it fully set up and operational on my wireless network using a DLink Draft N router. After it was operational on my internal network, I set both cameras up for internet access using different ports forwarded into the respective cameras which are set up on different internal IP addresses. Now I can watch both from my office. I have 2 pointing out my window to capture any activity on my front lawn. I am buying a 3rd one to use for indoor monitoring and security.
I will say that you must set up motion detection at your own risk. It WILL bombard you with about 300 emails or FTP alerts per hour, even on the lowest sensitivity. Other than that it is certainly one of the best looking, and easiest to use cameras I have found. For the money, you just can't beat the quality. Do not, however, try to use this an an outdoor camera...I heard someone who returned one trying to do just that...Couldn't figure out why after the first rain storm it failed completely...

I should have known better than to buy this camera considering the horrible experience I've had with LinkSys software for my wireless devices and my older version of this camera. The old camera worked adequately as a web-accessible camera but I wanted one that could record video too.

So, considering how far the price dropped on the WVC54GCA, I thought I'd give it a try. Big mistake. The software interface is atrocious. I mean bad, really bad. It looks like it was cobbled together from bits and pieces of code spanning Windows versions from the 1980's on up. There is zero consistency between dialogs. I don't care that much about looks so I could accept that if the recording software worked. It doesn't. I can't do anything worthwhile with the recording features since the playback utility crashes all the time. It seems to work for a while which gives me a good indication that it is somewhat capable of doing what it is supposed to do. However, as soon as I try to navigate the recorded video, it crashes. It crashes in many different ways. Change the start date of the video range, it crashes. Try to zoom into a range of video, it crashes. Try to change and save settings, it crashes.

This is clearly alpha-level software that hasn't even made it to beta stage let alone releasable. Where did they outsource their software department to? A pre-school?

Seriously, this software is bad. I can't recall ever seeing software this bad released even independently let alone from a big company like LinkSys.

The way that video is stored is equally horrible. Think you're going to have access to that MPEG4 video that they brag about? Think again. You can convert it to an AVI (if you're lucky enough to not have it crash in the process) but it appears that the AVI is uncompressed! What's the point in having MPEG4 video if you have to convert it to an uncompressed AVI to use it outside of the program?

I keep giving the software another chance and it keeps failing. Avoid this camera!

I like to think I'm a very technical and patient person and I really tried my best to like this camera - it was Linksys and Cisco, huge companies that should have done a better job. The camera stopped responding after a few hours (which others have reported here) so I traded it in for a new one, which did the same thing. Tech support recommended reinstalling the same firmware from their website, which worked, then FTP of motion detection stopped working. Tech support couldn't resolve that issue - somebody here said about the username not being able to contain an underscore, that may have been it. The motion detection didn't detect motion half the time, and you couldn't FTP non-motion images (like a normal webcam). After buying two cameras and sinking about 15 hours into troubleshooting, I gave up and am looking for another brand of IP camera.