Panasonic BL-C210A Internet Security Camera
- Image Sensor: 1/4″ CMOS, 320,000 pixel
- 3x Digital Zoom
- Up to 30 Frames per second
- Max. Video Resolution: 640 x 480 (VGA)
- 82¿pan, 42¿tilt F2.8 Lens brightness
Product Description
Panasonic BL-C210A Internet Security Camera… More >>
Logitech WiLife Digital Video Security–Hidden Add-On CameraWiLife Digital Video Security Camera Hidden Add-On Camera… More >>
I would change the rating to 2 and would not recommend purchasing if you need LOW Light like a nursery. I absolutely do not recommend this or the 230a for a nursery!
Review updated on 2-27-2010. I will start by saying this was a very difficult to set-up camera on a Mac using Snow Leopard with VM Fusion and Parallels. I was not able to get it to work on VM Fusion and Windows 7 and eventually switched to Parallels with Windows XP I finally got it to work. I also have Trendnet TV-IP422W which was simple to configure.
Pro’s
1. Comparing the picture in bright light using Parallels, IE and H.264 the picture is AMAZING. I will use the word ‘Shocking’ to describe how clear the picture is. Compared to Trendnet it is laughable how clearer the Panasonic picture is.
2. Web interface is great and is not limited for Mac users like Trendnet
3. The P/T is Very quick and much quieter compared to Trendnet
4. Unit size is very nice and the POE is well thought out.
Con
1. Night ‘vision’ is completely worthless. In the nursery with only a nightlight the TV-IP422W switches to a b&w view and we can see basic outlines, blanket vs child is a bit of a challenge. However, turn on the night vision IR’s and you can. No switch to the panasonic setting next to the Trendnet, NOTHING. When I say nothing I mean, you can’t see anything just a black room. No joke!
2. The range of the P/T is very limited and I haven’t figured out how to zoom.
3. It appears H.264 compression improvements only work on IE and Windows. You do not see a benefit with H.264 on FireFox or Mac browsers.
4. I found it very difficult to setup on a Mac and feel free to leave comments if you are having trouble and I will see if I can help walk you through what I did
I received a 4 pack of Synology surveillance License and it works great. You can P/T and detection appears to work. I’m using the latest beta firmware on a Synology DS 409.
Final
Bright and I mean bright light the picture is amazing. Dusk the picture is not as good as the Trendnet and in very low light there is NO picture! If you have the need for Low Light pass on this camera! I also bought a 230a wireless and I used the same approach and was easy to set up and will put details in comment response. I’m returning the 230a as it doesn’t work in low light of a nursery.
Rating: 4 / 5
Bought this camera through one of Amazon’s Gold Box Deals for $130. For the price, it’s a great camera. This is my second Panasonic network camera. A few years ago I bought their BL-C1A model Panasonic Network Camera and Pet Cam (BLC1A). The BL-C210A is a much nicer camera. The picture image is several times better, especially when motion is involved. You have the option of pan and tilt to look around. You can disable the indicator lights on the camera that lets you know the camera is on. You can also disable or override the privacy mode button on top of the camera. You can configure the camera to email you a picture when it detects motion in your house. Now how’s that for peace of mind while you’re away? And my favorite is that the camera is powered through the network cable which eliminates the need for a power outlet near the camera. The camera has a threaded mounting hole in the back that can be used to mount the camera to a standard tripod or an optional wall mount. The cube design is nice because it allows you to just set the camera on a shelf or table. The camera is light, so a tug on the network cable can bring it crashing down if it’s not secured.
There are limitations with the camera. If you want to view an entire room, you’ll need to mount the camera in a corner. It can only pan 41 degrees to the left or right, 10 degrees up and 32 degrees down. The camera is powered through the network cable, but it doesn’t support the industry standard PoE. Luckily it comes with its own power injector. You’ll need to purchase two network cables to use this camera. One cable connects the camera to the power injector and the other connects the power injector to your router/switch. The cable between the camera and power injector must be shorter than 98 feet. The box says you can only view still images from a cell phone. The website says you can’t listen to audio with a cell phone. I haven’t tried either. The software works pretty good, although I have found a few minor bugs in it. You have the option of viewing multiple cameras on one screen, but the max resolution for multiple cameras is only 320×240 and not the 640×480 max camera resolution. You don’t need a computer onsite to use the camera, but you’ll need one to do the initial setup.
Panasonic has nicer cameras than this model, but the prices also get outrageous. $185 (current Amazon price) is not bad for one camera. But after you buy one, you’ll want more so you can monitor the rest of the house. That’s when $185 per camera starts adding up. If the price drops again, I’ll definitely buy another.
Note: The zoom function is not obvious. There are buttons on the screen to do everything but zoom. I discovered you can right-click on the top half of the video to zoom in and right-click on the lower half to zoom out. You can also use the wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out.
Update (March 9, 2010): I did a little research on the camera model (BL-C111A) that the BL-C210A replaced. This camera has a larger CMOS sensor but the same resolution. The old model can pan 50 degrees to the left or right while this model can only pan 41 degrees. The old model can tilt down 40 degrees while this model can only tilt down 32 degrees. The old model had a 10x digital zoom while this model only has a 3x digital zoom. The digital zoom is not very good. If you have a need to zoom in on objects, you’ll want a camera with an optical zoom. Some new features added are SSL data encryption for secure viewing over the Internet, power through the network cable, H.264 video compression, and the ability to operate the camera with some models of Panasonic flat screen TV’s.
I bought another camera from Amazon to monitor the back door and kitchen area. It comes with mounting holes on the back of the camera so you can slide it down on a couple of screw heads. It frustrates me that you can’t mount it flat on a wall and pan 90 degrees to the left and right. I ended up purchasing mounting brackets VideoSecu Ceiling Mount Bracket for CCTV CCD Box Body Pro Camera 2-6 inch Adjustable MCB1w 1A2 so I can mount the cameras in a corner. Again, I really like the ability to power this camera through the network cable. I have the cameras and my network equipment all plugged into the same UPS. This way I can still monitor my house in the event of a power failure. If you’re looking for a camera to monitor the baby’s room, this is not it. You can’t see much with only a night light on in the room. You’re better off with a dedicated baby camera. We’ve had good luck with a baby camera made by Astak Astak 2.4 GHz Pan & Tilt Baby Camera with 2.5″ LCD Color Handheld Monitor with Night Vision. It can pan and tilt to see the whole room, can see very well in the dark even with no lights on, and comes with a handheld color monitor. The monitor eats batteries so we just turn it on when we hear something or want to check up on the kids. It also comes with an AC adaptor for continuous monitoring. Another reason why a baby camera works better for monitoring babies than this camera is that you don’t have to fire up your computer in the middle of the night to see if your child is awake. A word of warning, many baby camera’s operate on the same frequencies as your wireless network. You might need to play around with the channels on both the baby camera and your wireless network until they don’t interfere with each other.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is my second panasonic cam, the first one is BL-C131A, which I have it on 24/7 monitoring my dog.
So first, the installation was a breeze as opposed to some other reviewers. Load up the CD, it finds the cam right away and I change to static IP. One minor hitch, cams (both BL-C131A and BL-C210A complain about port forwarding not properly setup but I am able to access both cams from office via [...] My router is a Netgear 824.
Even it’s poe camera, you do not need to run 2 network cables, there is an additional little box that you plug in network cable from router and power supply, then one network cable from the box to cam, I guess they make use an un-use pair of cat 6.
Image quality on both cam are similar, very good with sufficient light and bad with low light, that’s the reason for 4-stars, but you can’t argue for a sub-$130 network camera. The other real plus is recording software works well and [...] is a real bonus. I only wish Amazon will put the wireless version on Gold Box soon.
Rating: 4 / 5
The BL-210a worked easily out of the box on my home network. It took me a little more time to get it work remotely and more time to get the email setting correct so it sends me an email based on motion and sound triggers. After I get an email I can go to the Panasonic web site and review the video. I like that you can set the camera to save both pre and post trigger video. I have the camera mounted in a corner near the ceiling. From this location I can use the camera controls to remotely move it to see the entire room. The resolution is great for a PC monitor but does not help to zoom in because it has a digital zoom. This camera gives me a great sense of security when I travel away from my condo.
Rating: 5 / 5
I bought this camera due to the poor low light performance of a camera that auto-switched into IR mode (and ghosted all people in the video). This camera handles moderately low light situations very well. The H.264 encoding offered by this camera is an improvement in quality and framerate over previous netcams I’ve owned. Customer support is poor. I had difficulties setting up the free dynamic DNS service through the Panasonic [...] website. I emailed customer support for help. I am a tekkie and found the issue on my own: Static DNS cannot be used with [...], and the DNS of your Internet provider has to be entered manually for IPv4 to work, then you have to enable auto port forwarding in the UPnP tab in setup to get the camera to setup your router’s firewall (if your router supports it). This issue would have been a lot easier to fix if Panasonic customer support had returned my email. I removed one star from the overall review and gave Customer Support 1 star for this experience. I’m not sure I could recommend this camera to someone non-technical wanting to use dynamic DNS to see it from a location outside of a home network.
Rating: 4 / 5