For those that need a simple indoor camera, easy to set on table or even mount on a wall or ceiling, provides great 

video  quality at  1080P  or 3MP, WiFi and PoE, IR illuminator, PIR  motion detector, in camera recording and built in 

microphone and speaker, this may be the camera for you.

Main Features

1. 1/3” 3 Megapixel CMOS sensor

2. H.264 dual-stream encoding

3. Internal Microphone & Speaker

4. MicroSD card slot for up to 64GB internal recording

5. 30fps @ 1080P (1920 x 1080) or 20fps @ 3MP (2048 x 1536)

6. 4mm fixed focal lens (79° viewing angle)

7. 2.8mm & 6mm optional

8. Day/Night IR Cut Filter

9. IR LED advertised working distance 10m

10. Powered by PoE or 12V

11. 3D Digital Noise Reduction

12. Digital Wide Dynamic Range & Backlight Compensation

13. Smartphone apps available

Two very popular request I get is to have a camera with not just 2 way audio, but  an actual microphone and speaker 

built into the camera.Also popular on many people’s wish list is a PIR motion detector that senses a live heat signature 

and is very accurate as compared to video motion detection that analyzes changes in pixels and can be easily triggered 

by a shadow, light or a breeze blowing magazine or plant. These two features are not unique as I’ve reviewed the AV

Tech and Axis cube cameras that also have this functionality.

What  makes  this  camera more  unique  is that its a day/night camera,meaning it has an IR cut filter to change to IR 

mode  at night  and has a bright  IR LED that provides nearly invisible lighting indoors as you’ll see later.Many of the 

competitors like AVTech and Axis are day only cameras that rely on a very bright but annoying white  LED to  provide 

night vision. IR is much better and more practical in real life and can be used more discretely.

The  other  feature  this  camera  has  is  the  ability  to  record  to  an  microSD card  and has full playback capabilities 

comparable to good NVR solutions with a calendar and timeline that can be scrubbed to find the event you are looking 

for. Alerts can be sent via e-mail if needed.

The  camera  comes  with  a  stand  as shown in the picture above. You loosen the gray collar and it allows you to aim 

the camera  as  you  wish. I  used  it sitting on a shelf, but the mount is very nice.You can remove the plastic cover at 

the base, and you can use screws to attach it to a wall,ceiling, angled or straight and the plastic base cover snaps back 

in to give it a nice clean look.

I  tested  it  with  both  PoE  and  WiFi.  PoE  works  as  you would  expect  and is  the  absolute best way to use this

camera if hardwiring  is  an option for you. I tested this with WiFi and as you can imagine, the further you are from your 

WiFi source, the  lower  the frame rate gets at 3MP or 1080P.

I found that to get the full frame rate, you need to be fairly close to  your WiFi  router/access  point. For me about one  

room away was the limit. It still connects further away, but the video starts getting  choppy.  Recordings to the SD card 

remain  smooth  as  it’s independent of the network, but if you were recording to an NVR PC,WiFi may not be the best 

solution and I would recommend PoE.

Even when on WiFi, I use a PoE wall plug adapter to  power the  camera. I  did  test  it with a 12V power supply and it 

worked just  as  well.  The  advantage  of  a  PoE  power  supply  is you can go further distance form the power source 

without any significant power loss. Also I’ve had less issues with PoE injectors  than with very inexpensive 12V adapters.

The  camera  also  has a quirky feature in that you can connect to WiFi and PoE at the same time,each with separate IP 

address.This is  the initial screen when  you  log  into  the  camera. What  this  camera  adds over non-audio cameras is 

audio controls for volume at the bottom.

Under the Network menu under Advanced Configuration, you can set the IP address for the wired lan and the WiFi 

in the“Select NIC”drop down menu.You set the IP address of each as you wish.The camera must first be connected  

via Ethernet to configure as is common with many WiFi cameras. You can use the included SADP program to find the 

camera initially and set the IP address to something suitable for your home network.

WiFi  options  are  set  under the WiFi tab. You can have it search your area for WiFi networks by clicking the Search 

button. Click on the network you want to connect to and provide a password if needed.You can connect to regular

WiFi router type network (Manage) or connect directly to a device,like to a PC without going through a router.

This is the System menu option that shows what version of the firmware you are using in the Device Information tab.

In the same menu option you also have the Time Settings tab where you can set the date/time or use an NTP time 

server  to automatically sync the time to your chosen time zone. To set daylight savings time, you need to go to the 

same menu option under the Advanced Configuration.

The Video/Audio menu is where you can set video and audio options. In the first tab, Video, you can set the 

resolution, frame rate, compression, i-frame and such.

The Audio tab shows your options for the microphone and encoding choices. Most important is the volume. I had to 

set it fairly high to get the sensitivity I wanted.

You control the image options in the Image menu option. This came with V5.1 firmware which has a list of categories 

on  the  right  with  choices  when you click on the category. The first one is Image Adjustments and lets you set the 

brightness  and  contrast  and  such.  I left everything at factory defaults but set sharpness down a little as sharpening 

artifacts can be distracting to me.

Indoors, if you have some high contrast, like a bright window area, you have two choices. If the window overwhelms 

the  image  and makes it seem dark, consider using the Backlight Settings where you can use backlight compensation 

(BLC) or wide dynamic range (WDR) to adjust the picture to your liking.

In the Video Adjustments category, you can set the video standard to the country you are in, 50Hz for most of the 

world,  60Hz  in the USA. This is where you would use mirroring to flip the image upside down if you need to mount 

the  camera  upside  down, although don’t see a reason as the camera can be oriented any way you like. The rotate 

option  is  good  if  you have say a long hallway and you want to rotate the image 90 degrees to have a portrait style 

layout instead of the traditional landscape mode.

Then  Events  menu  option  is  where  you set how you want to record. You can use traditional Video Detection as 

shown below or Other Alarm for PIR motion detection.

To use the PIR motion detector that is built-in, you need to go to the “Other Alarm”, check Enable PIR Alarm, check 

Trigger Channel and set a schedule and click the Save button. This is a far better way of doing motion detection than 

the method above. Where you would want Video Detection is if the camera is facing out a window as PIR won’t work 

though glass.

If you set everything  up correctly, the camera  should start recording video  when motion is detected. You’ll know 

because you’ll  see  events  denoted by a red lines on the timeline of  the Playback tab.You can slide the timeline to 

the time you want to look at it, use the calendar on the  right to select a date, and use the plus/minus signs on the 

right side of the timeline to adjust how much time to display at once on the timeline. This is an actual recording that 

was 

captured when a car drove by.

To export video, click  on the small filmstrip looking icon just above the timeline on the right. You select the start and 

end  time  you  want to search for and it will display a list of clips to export to your PC. You have to export entire clips 

and it writes them by default to your c:/users/yourname/Web/DownloadedFiles directory by date. It could be me, but 

I found exporting video did not work with IE 11 and had to use Firefox to download files.

Images

Now onto the images.  I placed  the camera  in a typical indoor situation, on top of a dresser in a bedroom. As before, 

you  can  click  on  the image to see the full size 3 megapixel image straight from the camera. Also as before, I set the 

max  exposure  time  to  1/30th  which  is a good compromise between low light performance and movement.This is a 

day shot with WDR set to 10% which provided a nice effect, color balance is quite good and it’s a clear picture

At  night, the  single  illuminator  does a very good job of providing even coverage of the room. The center is a little 

brighter, but that’s common. What’s good to note is the section of bed closest to the camera is about equality lit to 

the far end of the bed. Part of the dresser crept into the picture at the bottom.

Another use people have for indoor cube cameras is to view and possibly record outside a window. This image was 

taken at about 4PM which in Winter time and the lower sun will be contrasty.

I set WDR to 20 and it did bring out some more detail in the shadows. A scene this contrasty would need more WDR, 

but  you  have  to  weigh  the  rest  of  the day to set this properly. In my case, I do use a camera at this location to 

remotely check on the weather (snow, rain, fog).

At  night,  I  put  the  camera  on  the balcony. The reason is that if you tried to have the IR LED on and look out a 

window  as  I’ve  done above, you would just see the reflection back and does not have much value. If you want to 

have this camera outside, but make it more discrete and weatherproof, putting it inside a birdhouse would be ideal.

With WDR set to 20, you start getting more detail into the darkness, but at the expense of more noise.

I did a little video to show how switching from WDR set at 50 to having WDR looks like in a recording. Sorry, not that 

many boats in the winter to make the video more interesting.