Foscam FI9821W v2

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Bastiaan
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Foscam FI9821W v2

Post by Bastiaan »

Yesterday I got my two camera's I ordered by IBOOD, time to share my first impressions.
The set was a little bit pimped up with an extra antenna, amplifying the signal with 5DB and a long powercord extension. Both turned out to be a really great addition.
Price per camera was around 80 euro's while the regular price is around 140 euro. Pretty good deal.

In short: the camera is a big improvement compared to the regular 640x320 camera's.

Resolution:
This camera was called and HD camera but with a resolution of 1280x720 it is only Panasonic that calls this HD, the rest of the world considers 1920x1080 an HD signal. But besides that it already makes a big difference. Be aware that this is a 'widescreen' format and it might look a bit odd in your video surveillance program or HStouch screen where everything is setup to the older and more square 4:3 signal.
Not only gives the higher resolution more details / sharper images, because of the more modern chip, also the contrast range has been improved. Less issues with overexposed windows or rays of sunlight coming into the shots.

Because of the bigger chip I was also afraid the viewing angle would be less than my older FOSCAM who all have extra wide angle lenses. But the wider chip comes to rescue and the horizontal angle is pretty much the same, only top to bottom is a bit less. (comparing from memory)

As usual the interface of the Foscam is drama. I have tried to open the video stream on 4 browsers: IE crashed after I loaded the activeX plugin, FIrefox would not do anything after loading the plugin. Chrome refused to load the plugin and only Safari (on OSX) worked after a restart. Still don't understand why they need a plugin since all modern browsers support H264 video natively and companies like AXIS always work fine.
Anyway, the good News is that for all the basic settings you don't need the plugin because those pages show up in every browser. They have clearly worked on the sytyling so it looks a little less childish than before. Setup network, users and presets and move over to your surveillance program.

IR cut:
This camera has IR leds for night vision. Daylight also contain a lot of IR light so camera's that are sensitive for IR light tend to overexpose in daylight and have fading colors. In comes the IRcut filter. It is a mechanical piece that is pushed behind the lens when the camera switched from day to night mode. It is a real mechanical move and you can hear it clicking in the camera. Not sure how long that will keep going in a plastic housing but the results are great. Daytime shots give pretty good colors, night mode is also good. My old AXIS207 camera's still beat the FOSCAMs but they are now pretty close. My outdoor FOSCAM camera without IRcut is so bad that my Blueiris software can hardly get motion detection other than on luminance so if you need a camera with night vision, never buy it without IRcut for a proper day vision.

Codec:
The camera also uses H264 codec for the video signal which makes it easier for the network with the lower bandwidth it uses. Especially WIFI signals. With the two camera's hooked up to one wifi access point with WPA2 enabled i still get a steady 25 frames per second. Haven't seen that before. I am sure the bigger antenna also helps because my older FI8918W camera's would never give a reliable signal over wifi from the the same position.

PTZ:
De camera has a base for remote positioning of the camera. It works fine and has a lot of preset that can be used and given names. It also contains a slot for recording to a SD card in camera. Handy for the burglar to take his picture home I assume? The base also has a speaker so you can even talk to the burglar :-)

Final:
The camera also delivers a much better picture than the older FOSCAM camera's. From a value for money point of view this is a very good low budget choice if you are not relying on your browser for checking the camera picture.

Full specs: http://foscam.com/prd_view.aspx?id=187

I will post some screenshots when the weather clears up. No use to check colors on such a grey and rainy day.
Rutger
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Re: Foscam FI9821W v2

Post by Rutger »

I regret I didn't bought that camera ...It was a really good price, maybe next time.
My home automation blog: https://rutg3r.com
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