Wireless surveillance cameras - use, laws and ethics. | What is a Wireless Network Camera?

If you’ve been shopping for a wireless surveillance camera or nanny cam, you may have stumbled across the term Wireless Network Camera in your searching and wondered what sets this device apart from other offerings. You might also wonder how we feel about it. Read on to find out.

Before we even talk about wireless network cameras (sometimes called Wireless IP Cameras), it helps to understand a little bit about what a network is and how devices on a network function. Think of a network as a locally or distributed collection of devices which are capable of communicating with one-another. If you have two computers at home but sharing a single internet connection, you have a small, local area network or LAN. Without even leaving your home, data can travel from one of your computers to your router and on to the other computer allowing you to share files. In simplest terms, a wide area network or WAN is distinguished from a LAN by both the distance between the devices and the way data is packaged before being moved from one device on the network to another.

Every device that is capable of speaking on a network (LAN or WAN) needs to be able to distinguish itself from other devices as a unique entity. In the same way your house has a specific number associated with a specific street in a specific city in a specific country, devices on a network need addresses to determine how to get traffic from one device to another. Now, the simple fact is that I could write tens of thousands of pages on the way devices communicate over LANS and WANS. You tech-heads out there are going to have to forgive me for some serious oversimplification as this is meant for general consumption. No chatter about public/private IPs, natting or subnetting here. The only networking feature I want to cover (in very simple form) is IP addressing.

All you need to accept is that, whether set by the user, assigned by your internet provider or a dhcp server, every computer or network device that needs to speak to another computer or network device is assigned an address known as an IP address which helps to identify it as a unique device. This address is called an IP address. Now remember what we’ve covered so far as we’ll come back to it shortly.

Your wireless network camera is similar to your laptop only without a fancy operating system or games installed. The similarity is in its ability to attach to your local area network through your router at home much like a computer.  It should go without saying that, in order to take advantage of the wireless  element of a wireless network camera, you’ll have to have a wireless router capable of communicating with the camera.

The way this works is that the camera is assigned an IP address as mentioned above. The software to operate the camera is installed on your home computer. Once configured and talking to one another, you can control your wireless camera from your computer and the camera will actually transmit (wirelessly) the images it captures directly to your computer for recording!

But wait! The fun’s not over yet. Not only can you view recorded footage from your home computer, you can also “check in” on your camera from anywhere in the world where you can get an internet connection, much like those PC Anywhere ads you may see in which people can remotely control their home or office computers from another location. With just the launch of a browser and the IP address of your camera, you can literally “browse” your current home surveillance situation from just about anywhere in the world on any internet connected computer!

What differentiates these cameras from other options is that many surveillance camera systems you might be interested in purchasing require more than just the camera to truly be functional. We’ll cover wireless surveillance systems in greater detail in a future post but, for now, just recognize that having a camera without having the means to capture, store and review its footage is rather pointless. There are often other capture and storage devices required and they can cost you some extra coin. Furthermore, you lose the opportunity to remotely view and control your cameras. Wireless network cameras get around this problem but requiring only the wireless network you already have at home. What if you don’t have a wireless network and are, instead, plugging physically into the Ethernet ports on your router? That’s fine too. Most wireless network cameras I’ve seen sold have a built in Ethernet jack to allow you to make it a “wired” camera. You can save a lot of money, though, by simply buying a non-wireless model. Alternatively, you can purchase an inexpensive wireless router, plug in using Ethernet cables for your computer but take advantage of the wireless capability of the router for just your camera.

As with any technology, there are some things to keep in mind as you shop for wireless network cameras. Radio signals used to transmit your wireless signal can be interfered with by too many obstructions or by electrical interference. My own network camera, which I believe I’ll write a review about in my next post, has been very forgiving in this regard. It resides about 3 feet from an archaic television that probably leaks more radiation than Chernobyl and is 3 stories removed from the wireless router I have in my dungeon office. For all the talk of interference due to obstructions, mine seems to have no such problems but your mileage may vary.

So do we recommend wireless network cameras? Well, yes, but that depends on your needs. My wireless network camera is for indoor use only. I would not recommend it for outdoor use unless you feel like throwing away $300 every time it rains. Aside from that one annoyance, I love it and would recommend it to anybody assuming their requirements match its capabilities. For more about my network camera and wireless surveillance cameras in general, check back soon.