FOSCAM FI8905W wireless IP cam

seabreeze3 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:36 pm

nking wrote:

Not a bad picture considering the weather you're having. Quite similar to hear in the UK apart from you have some snow lying on the kerbside. I'm keeping your picture on my screen to see how the traffic builds up

Heh! Yeah! Take a look at about 45 minutes past the hour on even hours. That's ferry traffic from the mainland. The morning commute into Victoria is pretty much done at this point.

Austin · **Posted:** Thu Jan 13, 2011 8:47 pm

Going outside right now to mount it.

seabreeze3 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 13, 2011 9:43 pm

Austin wrote:

Going outside right now to mount it.

Alright!

Don't let that ridiculous mount get the better of you.

Cheers
Dave

Austin · **Posted:** Thu Jan 13, 2011 9:47 pm

That stupid mount won't hold a toothpick in place, it will have to do until I can get a better mount though.

http://weather.austingratzer.com/webcam/

Even though it is like 2PM, it is really dark out, so that could explain it still trying to run the IR LEDs... Mine is mounted on the back of my garage, with all the cables and connectors able to go though a window, so they have no chance of getting wet. This summer I'll probably drill a hole in the wall with grommets and run it though there.

nking · **Posted:** Thu Jan 13, 2011 11:00 pm

Austin wrote:

That stupid mount won't hold a toothpick in place, it will have to do until I can get a better mount though.
http://weather.austingratzer.com/webcam/

I note your using an FI8904, not sure what the difference is? Anyway, just thought I would mention that the live feed link didn't work for me.

Austin · **Posted:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 12:51 am

Weird, it works on all my browsers, perhaps I have something installed you don't?

It appears the only thing different is the lens, and that it has 64 IR LEDs instead of 24...

Edit: It appears that the .cgi embed doesn't work with IE, only the other main browsers...

nking · **Posted:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:00 pm

I took a look at the 8904 spec and having an increased angle of 42 degrees is not a bad idea

nking · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2011 10:19 am

Hi Austin,

The 8905 is reported to have an angle of view of 22 deg. whereas the 8904 is 42 deg. It is difficult to judge whether this is true or an error in the spec.
Your picture stream is somewhat dominated by the fir trees with very little of the sky visible which makes it more difficult to compare picture quality with Dave’s 8905…. Not knowing how close the trees are to the camera etc. I wonder how you would rate the image of your camera ?

many thanks

seabreeze3 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2011 3:45 pm

Here's a YouTube video comparing the F18904W with the F18905W. The 18904W indeed has a wider angle lens. In fact, (using my handy oceanography CDR distance crunching software), from that video when I give the 18905 a 22 degree view angle at the source, the F18904W reading is almost 56 degrees.

The 18905W works well for my purposes as sited. Any wider an angle and most of the additional view would be obstructed by dense forest on either side of the current view. As I am planning a 2nd camera facing west, I am NOT going to go with the 18905W. Since I'll be able to look through a window I will likely go with wireless indoor camera.

----

Ran into an issue of brightness yesterday. The cloud base changed several times during the day altering the light dramatically. Finding an all purpose brightness level has been a bit of a challenge. The UI has 3 settings (50 Hz, 60 Hz and Outdoors) plus brightness and contrast controls. I had the camera set for "Outdoors" with the brightness down from the default setting. Good sky view, good cloud definition, blue sky etc. When the sky became low nimbostratus the picture naturally darkened, however it continued to darken to create an image that looked very much like nighttime - at 1530 in the afternoon when light levels were very much "daytime". I adjusted brightness controls up with no result. It took a reboot of the camera to recover. Since then it has rendered a good image. I'll be watching this with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

----

Has anyone taken a look at this open source camera software from iSpy? Thinking I might give it a look see.

Austin · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 6:48 am

nking wrote:

Hi Austin,

The 8905 is reported to have an angle of view of 22 deg. whereas the 8904 is 42 deg. It is difficult to judge whether this is true or an error in the spec.
Your picture stream is somewhat dominated by the fir trees with very little of the sky visible which makes it more difficult to compare picture quality with Dave’s 8905…. Not knowing how close the trees are to the camera etc. I wonder how you would rate the image of your camera ?

many thanks

Yeah, I am going to move it this summer to a better location. I can't really say about the image, because it has been so dark here that it has the IR LEDs on all the time thinking it is night, that it just looks blah, I'm hoping for a sunny day so I can see how the color looks, but doesn't look like we are going to have on of those for a while, in fact I might move it to a different location sooner then that just because of that. The tree that is on the right is about 20-30 yards away from the camera... We will have to see.

I'll take some pics tomorrow to show it's view.

nking · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 10:48 am

Thanks for the link Dave - I didn't think to check YouTube. You can certainly see the difference. It looks like the 8904 doesn't support WPA2, perhaps Austin can confirm?

Austin - As you say, your picture looks poor because it's so dark and IR is being used - looking forward to seeing your pictures for comparison.

Many thanks for the update.

Austin · **Posted:** Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:19 am

nking wrote:

It looks like the 8904 doesn't support WPA2, perhaps Austin can confirm?

It does, WEP WPA & WPA2.

IR LEDs turned off for a few minutes today, picture was much better.

Austin · **Posted:** Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:31 pm

nking · **Posted:** Mon Jan 24, 2011 5:21 pm

Austin,

I have taken a look at your stream and the colours are really poor, are you seeing the same? The image from seabreeze http://www.members.shaw.ca/seabreeze3/html/webcam.html seems to be better, albeit his weather has been rather overcast and wet today.

Austin · **Posted:** Wed Jan 26, 2011 5:26 am

Yep, but my IRs have been on the entire time, we even had a nice sunny day with the sun pointed right at the camera. I know that it has a better image because I had it inside before I mounted it outside and it had a nice image. Perhaps I need to find ANOTHER spot?

Or mount a flood light or something to trick it into thinking it is brighter out?

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FOSCAM FI8905W wireless IP cam

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