Sharx Security VIPcella-IR SCNC2607 Security Camera
Gear Summary
The Sharx Security SCNC2607 is a Wi-Fi security camera with a rich set of features that provides a complete solution for a security DVR system for your home. I find it to be the perfect solution for my needs. Keep reading to see if it fits your needs.
Full Review
I live in a peaceful neighborhood for the most part, but like most neighborhoods, we have our share of mischievous teenagers. Recently, the neighborhood kids have started experimenting with setting off acid bombs and dry ice bombs. One of the more recent attacks took place at about 1:30 in the morning in the form of 4 acid bombs blowing up on my front doorstep. If you’ve never heard an acid bomb go off, you can’t truly appreciate the volume that they produce. I mean to tell you, they are LOUD!
After having these things set off twice near our house, I’d had enough. I was determined to put together a decent video surveillance system and catch these hooligans. In hopes of helping others who might want to do the same thing, I decided to document my experience.
The Camera
After doing quite a bit of research, I outlined the following requirements for my camera. The camera needed to:
- Be on my network so that video could be streamed without it being plugged into a computer.
- Provide sufficient video quality to aid in identification of any individuals in my yard.
- Not look obnoxious. In other words, no big cameras mounted on the outside of the house.
- Be able to record video at night in darkness.
- Be of high-quality so that I never need to worry about it working.
- Not require wiring for the video signal. AC wiring for power was fine.
I looked into web cams that would suit these needs, but most of them required that they be hooked up to a computer. My computer is a laptop that goes with me wherever I go, so hooking the camera to a computer was a deal-breaker. Other cameras required a lot of wiring and mounting on the outside of the house, something that I really didn’t want.
The SCNC2607 can be wired into your network by just connecting a network cable from it to your router. However, it can also join your wireless network so that you can put it anywhere. You do have to plug it into the wall for power, but that’s handled by a typical AC adapter and isn’t an issue.
You can access the video from the camera from just about anywhere. Naturally, you can access it from any computer on your network right from your Web browser (you just browse to http://scnc2607 on your home network and it pulls up the camera), but you can also access it from any computer on the Internet! You can also access video from your smart phone, and there are numerous apps for your iOS device that will allow you to easily view your video while on the go. All of this is made possible by the fact that the SCNC2607 streams several video feeds directly from the camera, no computer necessary.
The SCNC2607 camera has pretty powerful motion detection and alarms built in. It allows you to specify up to four rectangular regions of the screen, each with its own motion detection sensitivity and threshold settings. Using this functionality, you can usually obtain a setup that is perfect for your needs. When motion is detected, the SCNC2607 can send a picture (or a series of pictures) to your cell phone, email, or an FTP server. This is another incredible feature of this camera because it means that most people won’t even need to add any additional software to have a complete DVR system for the camera. Even better, the camera does all of this without a computer whatsoever. One more really cool feature. The SCNC2607 has a microSD card so that you can record video to a microSD card and pull it of the camera later.
While getting the camera set up, I did have a few questions. I filled out a form on the Sharx Security site and asked them to contact me. Shortly after that, I received an email that simply said, “How may we assist you?” I asked my questions and Sharx Security always answered promptly and thoroughly. In fact, they went out of their way to provide me with a ton of technical information about how to access the camera’s video stream using many different methods. Each time that I emailed them to ask more questions, they answered very quickly and were extremely friendly.
Night Vision
In my situation, I needed to record video at night. I looked into several different methods for doing so, including putting motion detector lights outside of the house. I decided against the lights because I wanted the culprits to feel secure as they went about their mischief. For that reason, I decided to go with infrared illumination.
Infrared illumination works exactly like visible light with one exception; the wavelength of the light isn't visible to the human eye. The camera, however, is able to see the infrared light easily, and through the camera, infrared illumination looks exactly like a bright light. The Sharx camera has infrared illuminators built in, but because I mounted my camera inside the house in order to shoot video through a window, the infrared illuminators reflected off the window pane. This resulted in a view through the camera that looked like someone was shining a flashlight into the camera.
Conclusion
I cannot recommend the SCNC2607 or Sharx Security highly enough. The camera is excellent quality, and the quality of support is top-notch. Finding that combination these days is extremely rare. I've now had this camera in operation for well over a year, and it continues to provide superb operation. I've also used it mounted in my attic in order to capture video of a critter that was hiding out. Because the camera uses Wi-Fi and is so portable, I can literally use it anywhere. (I've found 3M Command Strips to be an excellent temporary mounting solution.)
