- Easily view & manage you camera from mydlink.com
- Sleek and compact design that fits in the smallest corners of your home
- Wireless connectivity
- Ready to use in 3 simple steps
- Works with the mydlink iPhone app for on-the go viewing
- Easily view & manage you camera from mydlink.com
- Sleek and compact design that fits in the smallest corners of your home
- Wireless connectivity
- Ready to use in 3 simple steps
- Works with the mydlink iPhone app for on-the go viewing
Setup: I ran into an issue when I was trying to set up the wireless connection. I could not get my camera and wireless router to talk at all. I called tech support (the free version) and they were useless. The rep had no clue about the specific devise and it is clear that he was just in a large call center that probably supports dozens if not hundreds of products. I had NO problem when I hooked it into my network via an ethernet cable. The set up application runs very nicely and easily gives you the option to select either wireless or wired set up as needed.
Back to my wireless problem. I decided that I would pay $32 for D-Links premium support for 30 minutes of help...I rolled the dice, as they do not guarantee they will fix your problem for your investment, but I had a feeling my issue was something simple with my network configuration...and I was right. The rep was great, she remoted into my pc, checked out my wireless settings on my router and determined that I had a bad character in my site name. None of my other wireless products had a problem with the character, but the D-Link cam did not like it. She changed the name of my wireless network, we restarted the router,and instantly the camera linked in wirelessly.
I am absolutely convinced that if I had not had a dash in my wireless network name, then this wireless set up would have been a breeze. So, I can't place blame for this issue on D-Link, but it was interesting that no other wireless device I use had a problem with the naming convention of the network.
Once that hurdle was cleared, it has been smooth sailing. I really like the ease of use and the functionality included with the set up...through a web interface, you can control video size, audio (yes it has a mic and sends the audio over IP in realtime), you can set motion detection, auto emailing on detection, and it even has a built in ftp server to send the images where ever you like.
Simple camera that does exactly what it says...it provides decent video and audio wirelessly to your network and then you can do with it what you want.
Pros: Simple, straight forward, nice setup application used on your pc, D-Link offers free remote viewing via their web portal MyD-link, and they also offer a free iPhone app (no audio on the iPhone app).
Cons: Seems somewhat fragile...I would not want to drop it form more than a foot off the ground. A fall from any higher seems would shatter it.
Overall I think this is a really good value.
((Update Dec. 18, 2011)
So I have had this camera in service for over a year now...and it has been installed outside, under an eave of my house. It has no additional protection from the elements...just its own casing and the few inches of cover provided by the eave. It has been subjected to all the weather Atlanta receives in a year...heat 95+, cold 9, wind, rain, humidity, etc. The verdict...GREAT..not one issue with it. So, I just purchased three more for outdoor viewing around the house. I put one into service yesterday and had NO problems with setup at all. Used the auto network connect feature on the camera and my Netgear router and it hooked in within a minute. Great little camera and with the price dropped to $70, I think it will be hard to beat it.
Buy D-Link DCS-930L mydlink-Enabled Wireless-N Network Camera Now
This is the easiest way I found to monitor our home remotely.I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly everything came together I had the camera installed and transmitting in less than 15 minutes. I plugged the camera into a power outlet, popped the CD in (on a Windows 7 64-bit computer), entered my wireless network credentials, set up a DLink account from which to monitor the camera, and presto!
What works well:
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1. The lens is reasonably wide angle it can cover most of a normal size room.
2. It has audio! And it works very well.
3. Image quality is decent you can recognize people, but it isn't broadcast quality by any means.
4. Moving the camera kills the feed for a couple of minutes, but it's back on the network in less than 2 minutes.
5. The iPhone app is cool! We were able to watch the camera just as well on an iPod Touch. As another reviewer suggested, Tiny Cam (the free version is sufficient) worked great for me on Android.
6. The admin interface for the camera is stellar. You can control the refresh rate and resolution of the camera; the saturation, brightness, and contrast of the image; and the volume for the audio. You can even turn off the annoying LED light on the front of the unit!
7. Setting up motion detection is also really easy. You just pick the sensitivity of detection, and click on parts of the frame where you want detection to trigger. That's it! When motion is detected, you can ask the camera to email you the images.
8. Setting up email notification is simple too. I looked up the SMTP address and port for Yahoo, entered my email address and password, and was soon receiving emails from my camera!
9. This device supports WPS. What this means that you can automatically configure it to access your router, with just a couple of button presses. You press the WPS button on this camera, and within 60 seconds press the WPS button on your router (or in your router's admin screen). Then, magically, within about a minute, your camera configures itself with the SSID and password required to connect to your router.
10. It connects via Wireless-N and has an awesome range. It connects without problems to my router from across the house, through multiple walls.
What doesn't:
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1. The camera does not work in low light conditions as it does not have infrared capabilities. You need at least a 40W lamp for it to be functional. This tends to be a bit annoying for me, as the camera becomes fairly useless once evening falls. The infrared-capable DCS-932L may be a better choice in this regard.
2. No pan/tilt options on this camera. For me, this is not as big a deal as the low light issue, especially given its wide angle of view.
3. The camera feels a bit delicate, but should hold up well given that it isn't going to be handled much. It did take a couple of falls and has survived.
4. The camera needs to be plugged into an electrical outlet. Its short power cord does limit the locations where it can be placed.
Conclusions:
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Overall, this was plug and play installation at its best.
I also can't believe there is a simpler way to get all of this functionality in a single unit. This device is extensively customizable. I was particularly impressed that the designers had thought about putting in a way to turn off the blinking LED in the front of the camera. This LED is a very useful diagnostic tool (it flashes amber when it is setting itself up, and green when it is broadcasting), but it drove me nuts, until I found this option in the admin panel.
Updated Feb 06 2011:
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Okay maybe I spoke too soon.
Access to the camera that I tested when I wrote this review was from within my internal network. Unfortunately, the feed from this camera was not visible from outside my home network. My router and this camera were UPnP compatible but that didn't seem to help.
Networking Primer:
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Before you begin, remember that you only have one publicly visible IP address and this is allocated by your ISP, and is assigned to your router. Inside your network, your devices are allocated private IP addresses, in the range 192.168.x.y. These addresses are termed "private" because they only make sense within your own internal private network.
A computer outside your network only recognizes the public IP address of your router. It has no idea how many devices you might have on your internal network.
The workaround below, lets you use the mechanism of [port forwarding] to uniquely identify one of your internal devices, and make it addressable over the Internet. You do this by reserving a particular port (say, 81), and telling your router that any attempt to access that particular port on the public IP address, should actually be sent directly on to the internal device (say, a camera) identified by a given private address (say, 192.168.1.5).
You have roughly up to 65535 ports that you can forward, though many of these ports are reserved for well known applications (such as a web browser on port 80). Ports between 49152 and 65535 are considered private and usable for reasons such as this one.
For each camera you want to expose externally, you'll need to pick a port number, and then add a port forwarding rule to your router.
The workaround:
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1. Log in to your camera's settings page:
...a. on the Network Setup tab > set Port Settings to listen for HTTP requests on port 81.
...b. Disable UPnP
2. On your router
...a. Turn off UPnP
...b. Add a new Port Forwarding Rule
.....Service Name: DCS930L.
.....Protocol: TCP/UDP.
.....Starting/Ending Ports: 81.
.....Server IP Address: set this to the internal network address for your camera.
.....This will be of the form 192.168.x.y, where x usually is 0 or 1, and y will vary.
A port forwarding rule causes any request coming to your router's IP address at this port to be forwarded to the server IP address that you specify.
3. Now access the camera using your static IP address as assigned by your provider @ port 81.
...This will take the form: . Note this is your externally visible IP address (not of the form 192.168.x.y)
...Provide login credentials.
If you want to get really fancy, and are tired of keeping up with changing IP addresses, then you might wish to register at dyndns.org. My router Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700 actually keeps dyndns informed whenever my ISP changes my IP address. You can then use a simple textual host name and it will be automatically converted to your IP address whatever it may be set to currently.
Hope this helps.
Happy Monitoring!
~Damodar
Read Best Reviews of D-Link DCS-930L mydlink-Enabled Wireless-N Network Camera Here
I purchased one of these cameras several months ago and it worked so well for the first month that I decided to get a second one. I have now had both for about two months and am finding that my first camera's wireless connection has slowly gotten less and less reliable. It had been in a fixed location the whole time with two walls and a floor between camera and wireless router (about 25 30 feet away). Router settings have not changed. I have performed extensive diagnostics, i.e. went through camera setup several times, changing router settings (removed all wireless security, used fixed IP) and nothing worked. Reset button on camera did not help. Firmware update did not help.I have finally found that the camera now only works within 15 feet or so of the router, and it must be on the same floor as the router with no walls in between. This is unacceptable for a wireless camera, and my concern is that the wireless card within the camera is losing strength. The other camera I own once worked outside of the house entirely and now will no longer work there nor in the location of the first camera (which is closer and less obstructed than being outside). All other wireless devices we own have ample wireless signal throughout the house, our garage, and most of our yard, and as far as I can tell none of that has changed.
As I am using an Airport Extreme router and thought that there might be some sort of compatibility issue I have even tried running the camera wireless through my old D-Link DIR-615 wireless router with a fully open wireless connection and have not had any luck...the signal range for the camera is the same. DLink support has been no help, other than suggesting only using their routers (which didn't help) and rebooting everything and reconfiguring the camera (also did not help).
I cannot recommend this camera to anyone due to this reliability issue. It is fairly easy to set up and has a useful iPhone app available, but will likely be no use to anyone unless they can keep the camera within 15 feet of their access point with no obstructions in the long run. All I can do is wait until I have the money to replace these cameras with something better. Don't let this happen to you. Start with a different camera first.
Want D-Link DCS-930L mydlink-Enabled Wireless-N Network Camera Discount?
I'm really digging this camera. If you have some basic networking chops then setup is a breeze and can easily be done on any operating system with a web browser without using the CD. Here's what you need to do.1) Plug the IP Cam directly into your router with an ethernet cord (there should be one provided in the box).
2) Plug the power cord into your camera. =D
3) From a web browser, log into your router and find the IP address of the camera. Finding the IP address is probably the hardest step. On my D-Link router the IP address can be found in the Setup -> Network Settings tab.
4) From another browser window, enter the IP address of your camera. If you successfully entered the right IP address then you should see a login window. The default username is "admin" and the password should be left empty.
5) Now you are at the setup page and you can add your wireless router and modify various settings.
Here are a few extra steps that I highly recommend.
On your router, set up a DHCP Reservation to your IP camera or if your router doesn't have this feature then set up a static IP address on your camera.
Create a free dyndns.org account and set that up on your router, NOT directly on the camera.
Once you have dyndns setup on your router, set up a virtual server to forward a specific port to port 80 on your IP camera. (For instance yourname.dyndns.org:4444 will point to your ISP's DHCP IP address and then forward port 2000 directly to port 80 on your IP camera. This allows you to see your camera from any browser on any internet connected computer.)
If you have an android phone, install Tiny Cam from the Market and you should be able to see a live video feed on your mobile phone from anywhere you have wireless access.
Setup was a very straightforward breeze for me. It took approximately 15 minutes to set everything the way I wanted it and I never touched the CD or instruction manual.
For the price, the camera quality more than met my expectations. This is a perfect camera for me to monitor my dog on my phone or laptop while I'm away from home.
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I purchased four DCS-930L cameras to set up a DIY home surveillance system. Overall I am happy with what they can do with such a low price tag.The installation was easy. After opening the box, I connected cameras to my router with network cables. And after I inserted the CD into my computer, the auto-run program led me through the entire process step by step. The program had no problem finding the cameras, and registered them to mydlink.com.
That was the only time I needed that CD-ROM. Any additional setup, such as wireless, video, audio, motion detection, email, or ftp, etc, could be performed via mydlink.com. I could change the settings from anywhere with internet connection. And unlike other products, mydlink.com is free. This is indeed terrific!
Setting up the wireless for DCS-930L was not difficult either. If you have the experience of adding a few window-based PCs into your home wireless network, you will find the process to add DCS-930L is exactly the same. I entered the SID and the WEP password, disconnected the network cable from the cameras, and unplug/plug the power cord. In about 1 minute the cameras (now wireless) showed up on mydlink.com!
The wireless range on this camera is very good. I think D-link really listened to their users, since there were lots of complaints on the poor wireless range of its previous version DCS-920. I have a big house with many rooms. In a few remote rooms with many walls in between even my itouch cannot find wireless signal. But DCS-930L can! And the connection is always stable. So far I have never lost any video feed yet. Without wireless connection concerns, I can put the cameras anywhere there is a power outlet. (Yes, DCS-930 does need a power line. So it is not completely wireless. But I could always find outlets close enough to plug my cameras in.)
A new feature you cannot find in DCS-920 is the motion detection. Again, via mydlink, I turned on motion detection, adjusted the detection sensitivity, and then selected the areas in the view point to be on/off motion detection. The sensitivity and the areas depend on what the cameras point to and the lighting condition of the time. So it took me a few days to experiment different settings in morning/evening sun-light, etc.
After that, I went to the email setup page and select "motion detection" so that emails will be triggered by the motion detection. I intend to use it when I am away from my house. Again, DCS-930L has an enhancement over DCS-920: I can set up SSL emails so that my email password is always protected.
The video quality is 640x480, which I believe is the same as the DCS-920. However, DCS-930 has an enhancement: Audio. I could hear the sound from the camera even when I clap my hand in a different room! Of course the quality of both video and audio is no where near HD. But given the low price tag, I have no complaints.
The only major issue I can think of is the lack of the night vision. Without it the camera can hardly see anything during the night, and the entire surveillance system is therefore useless. (However, no camera in this price range has night vision, at least I could not find one.)
Overall I am very happy with the camera. And I will not hesitate to recommend it to anyone.
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