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Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11

Rating: (143 customer reviews)

What happens when you’re not around? Life is precious and valuable. View the things you value when away from home or when you’re at another room in your home. View your property, your pets, even your children. You can even listen in! You can add extra eyes (through your computer) by adding the Panasonic BL-C131A Wireless Network Camera. It works with 802.11g wireless technology and it lets you monitor its “view” (what its lens sees) from virtually anywhere. Just log on a specially designated Internet site using a PC and instantly access camera images. You can even control the BL-C131a using your web browser to move the camera’s pointing direction and modify its digital zoom to bring objects of interest into close view. Place this plug-and-play camera in your home, office, vacation home, or almost anywhere else you’d like to keep an eye on things, with no PC required at the location. Check your property, check your children, check your babysitter - from any location using your PC or an Internet equipped cell-phone or PDA. And the camera can be easily hidden from view. 1 Lux Color Night View Mode Simple plug&play mode Built-in Microphone - listen as well as view Privacy Mode- Privacy mode can be controlled remotely using your administrator password Camera can be set to automatically record video at certain times and certain speeds With optional, external sensors attached to the camera, it’s possible for the camera to email5 or record when triggered by motion, sound, light, timer, or even a push button Compression Format JPEG (3 levels), MPEG4 Picture Sizes - 640 x 480, 320 x 240 (default), 192 x 144 Frame Rate (speed) - Max. 30 FPS (640 x 480, 320 x 240, 192 x 144) Integrated F2.8 fixed-focus lens - set for 20 to infinity Panasonic 1 Year Warranty Connecting the camera to the Internet requires Internet access and may require that you obtain additional hardware such as a cable or DSL modem.

Technical Details

* Place anywhere you’d like to keep an eye on things, with no PC required at the location
* View and control from a standard web browser, video display, or compatible cell phone or PDA
* Point the camera where you want with eight shooting position presets
* Built-in heat sensor allows record and/or notify by email when someone enters the room
* Connect wirelessly with standard 802.11b/g devices, SSID filtering and 40/64/128-bit WEP encryption

Keep an Eye on Your Pets

Always feel close to your pets, whether at work or on vacation. Did the walker show up as promised? Is the dog sleeping on the sofa? Is the cat scratching your new leather chair? You’ll know instantly with the Panasonic PetCam.

See There When You Can’t Be There
Place this plug-and-play camera in your home, office, vacation home, or almost anywhere else you’d like to keep an eye on things, with no PC required at the location. The camera can be viewed and controlled from a standard Web browser, video display, or even a compatible cell phone or PDA, with no additional software required. All of the other required software, including control software (TCP/UDP) and e-mail software (SMTP), is already inside the camera.

Control the Camera Remotely
Using a standard Web browser, video display, or even a compatible cell phone or PDA, you can control the movement of the camera. There is Pan (left & right) movement and Tilt (up & down) movement available. You can also assign a “Home Position” that allows you to return the camera to a pre-designated shooting position. Up to eight shooting positions can be registered in advance, so you can aim the camera exactly where you want it. You can also click on the part of the image you want to see, and automatically bring that part to the center of the screen.

When You Need a Little Privacy
With the built-in Privacy mode, your privacy is protected by simply pressing a button. An indicator on the front of the camera turns red, and you know at a glance that the camera is now only accessible by you. The camera can also be set up to show a green light when the camera is being accessed.

Sensor Recording
With the built-in heat sensor, the camera can be set to record and/or notify you by email when someone enters the room. It can even automatically move to a preset location when triggered, just in case someone was viewing a different part of the room.

Record Only What You Want to Record
The camera can be set to automatically record video at certain times and certain speeds.

Create Your Own Free Web Address
The free Viewnetcam service allows you to create a personal Web address (e.g. http://bob.viewnetcam.com) so you can view your camera’s live images on the Internet. Access your Panasonic Network Camera live from virtually any Internet connection point around the world! Your Web browser is the only software you’ll need. Here’s how the camera and service works: Special software embedded within your Panasonic Network Camera gives your camera the ability to locate your unique Internet address. No matter what kind of Internet connection you have or which Internet provider you use, the Viewnetcam.com service will keep your camera’s Internet address permanent.

Features

* 802.11g/b Wireless
* Pan/Tilt/Digital Zoom with Presets
* Simultaneous MPEG-4 and JPEG
* 1 Lux Color Night View Mode
* Up to 30 Frames per Second CMOS
* Full-screen Monitoring
* Remote Monitoring from Cell Phone
* 4-up and 12-up Multi-camera Pages
* Built-in Web Server/IP Address (IPv4/v6)
* Built-in Microphone
* Thermal Sensor
* Image Transfer by Motion Detection, Sensor Alert, Timer
* Privacy Mode
* Plug-and-Play Installation
* Free Web Address
* Multi-Language Interface
* 1 Year Warranty

Customer Reviews:

Great Camera!, January 21, 2009
By D. Schlaudecker
This is a great camera. I bought it based on amazon.com reviews praising the camera AND the customer support. Happy to say that I didn’t need customer support. The installation went very smoothly and took less than an hour from inbox to wired install to wireless install. the sound only works in Internet explorer not in firefox or safari. The software lets you access and control the camera from your network or from the internet and has programmable buttons for preset positions in the room you’re watching. I highly recommend it!

Motion sensor works through window, January 19, 2009
By M. Steudel (Seattle, WA USA)
There are already a lot of reviews touting how good this camera is (and I agree with them). The one area that I didn’t see very many comments on is how well it works through a window. At first I tried pointing it through a window that had a screen. Well that didn’t work because it focused on the screen and you couldn’t really see anything. I moved it over to a spot on the window where there isn’t a screen and it looks great. At it’s highest motion sensitivity setting our camera works through a window to about 30 - 40 feet. It can get triggered by the neighbor walking his dog, a bird fly by (general at about 20 feet or closer), or cars driving through the alleyway. It’ll even trigger at night when cars drive through our alleyway. All of the above motions are when it senses someone moving left to right. I haven’t really tested it if I move towards the camear yet. I found it easy to setup, though I haven’t tried setting up the port forwarding part (that’s to access it from outside our home network like from a coffee shop).

Great Wireless Network Camera, January 17, 2009
By Murat Okyar (San Jose, CA United States)
I have had this wireless camera for about a month, and I am extremely happy with it.

We needed a nanny cam, since we leave out baby with the nanny alone for long periods of time, and the grandparents living out of town want to watch him over the Internet. Before I bought the camera, I did an extensive research on mid-level, wireless cameras, and liked Panasonic BL-C131A the best. (The reviews of “$100-or-less wireless cameras” didn’t sound promising at least in the long run with burnt-out lenses, or frequent reset requirement etc.) This Panasonic camera seemed somehow pricey and from the reviews the set-up to access the video remotely sounded pretty complicated.

After one month of use, I am very happy with the camera’s performance, it’s well worth the money. The set-up turned out to be much easier than I thought. I have a Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless router connected to my DSL router. My DSL connection has a dynamic IP number. This configuration should be pretty common. The set-up instructions were for this kind of configuration and easy to follow, very straight forward. I should note, that I upgraded the firmware, as soon as I had access to the camera, since some of the bug fixes etc sounded applicable to my set-up. The upgrade was easy and straight forward as well.

The free, built-in dynamic-DNS service (through viewnetcam.com) works great. The streaming video and audio can be accessed over the Internet, but for the audio I need to use Internet Explorer since Sharp G.726 codec is needed. Windows Media Player on Windows XP comes with this codec and IE works great. I couldn’t make Firefox work with this codec, so no audio with Firefox. Windows Vista may not come with this particular codec, but it is easy to find the free codec and install it.

My wife uses her Blackberry to access the camera remotely. It is still-images only without audio. One needs to keep refreshing the image!

I mounted the camera on the wall; it comes with all the necessary screws etc. The long, thin, black power cable running over the wall looks ugly, I’ve yet to find a way of hiding it.

I like and use the following features:
- Enable/Disable the green indicator light on the camera.
- Enable/Disable the privacy mode.
- Set timings for the camera to be active.
- Pan and tilt and pre-set lens locations work great, but it is kinda noisy. In a quiet room, one can easily hear the lens moving around.
- Creating users and granting different permissions for remote access are neat. As an administrator, one can see who is logged in.

The standard setting of the microphone is pretty good. The room where the camera is located is well to OK lit most of the time, so video, colors etc. are fine for me. I read that the motion detection may be tricky. I don’t use it, so no comment about that feature.

The camera comes with a recording software, which seems OK.

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