Review on 📷 Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera: Night Vision, 3.6mm Lens, and 67° Viewing Angle by James Pfettscher

For the money it's hard to beat. I connected this to my (new and expensive) router via an ethernet cable, but there is a noticeable lag of a second or two behind "real time" on my Wi-Fi connected computer. I wish there was a way to tweak the color rendering, but overall it looks pretty good visually. I can control it from my smartphone with a third party app. I wish the camera software came with an app I could install on my phone that could provide more functional accuracy, but when I can sit in a hotel room a thousand miles from home and watch bastards ransack my house , this is almost real time, what's not like? On the back of the camera are connections for a microphone and speakers (which I think should be powered from an external source) for long-distance two-way communication (calling capability for this product). I don't know if it supports externally powered stereo speakers. I think I will. I have enough e-waste to understand. It can also (presumably) be programmed to send alerts to a smartphone when motion and loud noises are detected. But that leads me to one major complaint about this camera. The accompanying documentation is both online and on the included Mist CD. Setting up to connect to my computers and Android phone was a breeze. Then it changed the urls to me. It may seem unbelievable but the second time I tried to connect to my Android phone the camera url changed and I couldn't connect the second time until I noticed the url change. It's not that I misspelled or rearranged the numbers, the URL has radically changed. I recommend anyone who needs a surveillance or baby monitor camera to buy this. For the price I paid, the image quality is pretty damn good. My point is that it's not for beginners (like me) and it's not a turnkey system.