Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic BL-C1A-S Network Camera and Pet Cam (Silver)

I've got a very high end version (PTZ-360 20x optical zoom) and the core of the o/s is the same as this camera which was a gold box item. 80% of the functions were the same.

1. throw the camera on your network-> panasonic sells a really good ethernet over power kit. If you search around you'll find its rather cheap. this kills the power and network in one stone. i use one master and 11 slaves in my house to do powerline networking.

2. the camera is odd in that it disregards the dhcp server and jumps to the x.x.x.253 address on your network. so if you have 192.168.1.1 as a router the camera jumps out of the box to 192.168.1.253; then just browse to that page since these cameras have the newest firmware and it will require you to setup an admin password. now i'd strongly suggest you move the camera to a static ip since disconnections will occur and static ip's have no recovery time nor do they move around if your router gets twonky and decides to move everything around. Also with TWO cams you definitely want to move them off the .253 address since they could collide should something reset. Most routers leave 100 ip's (like x.x.x.2-x.x.x.99) alone so you could just move them out of dhcp range and set them up.

3. triggers -> just like the big brother panasonic net cams this has the same design but with very little nvram. the best scenario imo is to setup the unit to FTP the images somewhere when a trigger (motion on XX to YY day of week, during XX to YY hours) occurs. These can pump out alot of emails; i do not recommend this transport.

good stuff ask a networking buddy for help. the cd included is never used. this camera is comaptible with apps like webcam XP pro

Its labeled a pet cam...but it doesnt have to be for pets alone!
I bought this to use in a SERVER room in our company's network operations center. It was basically set to keep an eye on specific servers that were giving us some issues and we could not ascertain if it was hardware or software.

We plugged this puppy (no pun intended) - had it setup inside of 15 minutes and pointed it to a rack that held 3-4 servers. Then we got to work monitoring on a regular basis inside our office as well as over the internet.

Voila - it worked perfectly - we found our HARDWARE problem and then moved the camera back on to a wall for regular room monitoring.

Do NOT expect this to give you HIGH RES images...but it does a GREAT job in giving you the quality it should. If we can get enough detail to find a faulty server then this will do what it should for you to keep an eye on your PETS....

Enjoy!

I got this camera as a Gold Box special last year, and have had it in regular use since then. The picture quality is decent for the price, and better than my no-name netcams, even the ones with interchangeable CCTV type lenses. There is a loss in versatility since it is a fixed focus unit with no optical zoom capabilities, but again, for the price, you can't expect all that.

The good:

- decent low light capabilities. It won't stop fast moving objects like a car going by but it will trigger on the movement.
- Excellent control of motion sensitivity. This camera detects motion by changes in the images from one shot to the next; it does not have a thermal or other motion detector, like some higher end units. You can tell it how sensitive to be; my dog yawning won't set it off, but getting up, rolling over, etc will.
- Mailer and FTP functions. First I set it up to FTP files to my webserver; it sent a picture once per minute on a schedule, and also sent a set of consecutive images when motion was detected. By viewing my own web page I could keep an eye on the dogs at home. Now I have it set to email those images to GMail, which also works fine.
- Works with powerline networking; we don't use wireless. Cheap home power-line network adapters let us put the camera wherever there is a power outlet without a bulky access point or a long network cable.
- Both scheduled AND triggered images can be handled.
- Works fine with a decent firewall (I use a Sonicwall) to allow direct access to the camera from the internet, with security.

The not so good:

- The mounting parts are restrictive. A tripod would be better. It can be hard to get this thing mounted and aimed solidly if you don't want to screw it in place.
- The swivel can barely tighten enough to hold the camera against the strain from a normal ethernet patch cord. You may need to tie-wrap the cable to the mount to prevent it from pulling the camera off-aim.
- Digital zoom is a farce; it simulates zoom by losing resolution

The bad:

- The software is windows only. It is entirely possible to use this camera with any standard web browser but the fancy software provided only work with windows.

I am very happy with this unit, especially at the Gold Box price.

This product functioned as described, was easy to set up and the image quality in both the 320 - 200 and 640 - 480 vga mode was very good.

Plugging into a wireless access point allows you to bridge connections.

Four stars since it does not support sftp or https uploads, otherwise very nice deal.

I really like the panasonic OS/SW with these cameras. This one is REALY cheap and requires power and cat-5 to work. If you have that and can fix this on a specific area (no zoom, ability to move, etc.) go for it.