Handy Features

Whilst the camera is already pretty discrete, being contained within a dome, it is possible to disable the power LED under the camera settings options. From the same configuration area you can also toggle the audio for the camera – this allows you to send audio messages from your computer which come out of a speaker attached to the audio socket of the camera.

From the Live View window it is possible to capture images and record video directly in several sizes from 640×480 down to 160×120.

It is worth noting at this point that a number of the Live View features, including the audio to camera option, are only available when using Internet Explorer as the browser.

If you are using the EyeBall on a home or small network attached to a broadband router it is likely you will want to make use of the dynamic DNS option. Internet addresses are typically assigned randomly to Broadband routers and refreshed regularly and by utilising Dynamic DNS you can use one of the several services to provide a consistent method for updating and accessing the camera broadband address (although you will likely also need to configure your router to allow the traffic through). Supported services include dtdns.com, dyndns.org, no-ip.com, and 3322.org.

On Camera Recording

As mentioned at the start of this review the EyeBall includes a microSD slot for direct recording to memory card. For this you need to ensure the camera is off whilst inserting a suitable memory card (a memory card is not included so for this we’ll us an 8GB card).

Once the memory card is installed you can power the camera on and head into Settings->Storage. From here go into Storage setup and make sure “Storage” is enabled and “Store to:” is set to “SD Card”. Now, you can setup what you want to record – initially we’ll go for “Snapshot at Interval:” where we can define the snapshot interval, and from what stream to take the snapshot.

As we’re using an 8GB card we’ll go for a snapshot every 10 minutes, an always on schedule, and take the image from the primary stream. The primary stream is setup by default for capturing 640×480 images whilst the mobile stream is fixed at 176×144.

We’ll also define a single window motion detection alarm and setup a short “always on” recording of 10 seconds per alarm from the primary stream. By default snapshot images are prefixed with a “P” whilst movies are prefixed with “M”.

Once the device is setup the recordings being and you can head into Storage->Browse Storage to access them. The browse storage window has four options on the sidebar: Record on Alarm, Snapshot on Alarm, Continuous Record, and Snapshot at interval.

The Snapshot at Interval option lists the regularly snapped images and clicking one of the images displays it in the browser. You can also right-click the image to save it to your local computer. If you have enabled any on screen display options under Camera->OSD Setup they will be overlaid on the image.

Similarly, the Record on Alarm option lists the videos captured according the alarm functions – these have been saved in the .MOV format according to the streaming settings specified under Camera->Stream setup. Videos can be played directly or saved to a local computer. Additionally, alarm activated recordings can be automatically directed to an FTP server or email address.

With typical recording devices the video would be captured elsewhere and you would have to burn specific clips out to CD or DVD. This can be time consuming so the ability to pop out the memory card and use it directly is a great bonus and given that a typical 8GB Micro SD HC card is around £7 it’s quite effective too.