Network Camera is a standalone video device to capture and transfer live video for the surveillance purpose. No computer required at all. It is great to use in environment without attendant.

There are lot of brand, model and manufactures for you to shop around, but ask yourself the following questions before you make a decision which one you will go with.

1. How broad is your bandwidth? The throughput of your internet connection set how fast you can upload video. More usage of bandwidth means more traffic, which means you probably need pay more.
2. How live you need your video? More frame rate for your camera, better video you get. The real time video need 25 frames/second. It is great bandwidth eater for live video via internet, especially if you monitor your home through ADSL which means upload is much slower than down load. All your live video is using up bandwidth. Typically to say, you won’t get 25f/s rate in an ADSL connection.
3. How real time you need for home video monitoring? Delay is almost guaranteed for a self home monitoring via internet, but products from different manufactures differ in delay. Set a typical application environment and compare products.
4. How early you need the monitoring system to record? Generally to say, network camera emphases on remote monitor and pay less attention to record. It acts very well for viewing snapshot on demand, but only upload snapshot or video to server under specific situation, such as motion detected, or IR sensor triggered. All those happen after the event triggered. Only a couple of Network camera can record and upload snapshots prior to the event triggers. It is great feature to let you know the context of the snapshots.
5. How large you need the live video. Large video file means huge resolution, mean detailed image, of course, means more bandwidth.
6. How smart you need the video being compressed. There are a couple of standards applied in today’s market, such as MJPEG, MJPEG-1,MJPEG-4 and H.264. Find the advantages of them here:

·        MJPEG is evolved from JPEG, which uses inner frames compression algorithm. Less compression rate, large video size. Video quality is good. But not good for long haul recording and not good to monitor complex and fast changing settings.

·        MPEG-1 is based on frame forecast algorithm. High compression rate and small video can be produced by combining and compressing related frame. Not good candidate for real time video.

·        H.264 is latest video compression technology which uses block oriented motion estimation based   algorithm to achieve most efficient compression.

1. How many channels you need to monitor? Most IP Camera only support one channel video input, but some IP Video servers declare supporting 4,8 up to 32 channel. If you need more channel, you need consider IP Video server. Another parameter to consider is dedicated multi channel or shared multi channel. Shared multi channel is to support multi channel input but only one channel can be monitored in a given time. All input channel is manually switched or auto-switcher to share the only one video processor.

As soon as you get your network camera, please consider our free home monitoring from cell phone service.

Mary is driving on the way to work and finds out she does not arm the security system in her home. She takes out the cell phone and arm the alarm system right away.

During lunch break, she is wondering how the dog is getting alone with newly adopted cat, has better to check. She clicks a couple times, and is able to watch a live video on cell phone directly. Good, they are happy.

She gets a text message in her cell phone saying that door is opened, and she clicks, clicks, and watches the real time snapshot and checks the recorded snapshots from cell phone and finds her husband just came home from Europe. She disarms the alarm system in home because there is live guard in home now.

She needs to pick up her daughter on the way home, which road will be better? She is now viewing the real time traffic cameras in her city on the cell phone directly.

By the way, she already turned on the rice cooker from cell phone directly so that the rice will be ready after she gets back home.

Is that a fiction movie?  No, it is a typical day of a user of MobiWatcher , like my friend Mary.

Actually, that is more for Mary to use her cell phone. She can use her cell phone like a remote monitor, remote control, digital alarm and quick watcher for real time traffic due to a special     home monitoring from cell phone  service from MobiWatcher.

Like Mary, I am a strong believer believing that cell phone will dramatically change our daily life, the service of   monitor and control home from cell phone   is just a start.

The most exciting news is there is free service every one can get it from MobiWatcher.

There are some service providers hosting digital home surveillance service out there, but what makes MobiWatcher , Home monitoring from cell phone  service provider, standing out.

The first killer reason is our open platform. Unlike other service which only support specific video capture device, for example, web cam or some specific IP camera, Mobiwatcher is designed and created with compatibility and flexibility in mind at the first day, and is becoming such a open platform that any IP camera and web cam can be hooked in our system and function immediately. This unique advantage requires no purchase new hardware to enjoy our service thus reduces the cost of ownership, and opens the door to a huge potential user base.

The second killer reason is the usability.  IP video surveillance will be the next big wave in surveillance and security industry, and is the choice in the digital era.  However, set up and configure an IP camera can be a daunting task even for an experienced IT professional, and almost a mission impossible for a regular family or business user. To make IP Camera easy to configure and use is the major motivation to create mobiWatcher, which can help regular users to set up and install an IP camera in the following aspects:

1. Auto Camera detection
2. Auto DDNS register and configuration to handle dynamic IP address
3. Auto port forwarding mapping in router for most routers
4. Auto configure most common settings such as NTP,FTP,SMP, WIFI, Port, in IP Camera
5. Auto set up account with mobiWatcher, and user will find their device just working magically.

The another advantage is that mobiwatcher service is integrated seamlessly with our free mobile client so that user can solely use cell phone to manage their video capture device, such as turn it on/off motion detection, turn on/off alarm, receive alerts, view real time snapshot or recorded images, directly in cell phone. It actually opens a new space in mobile world for the application of  IP surveillance.

The last advantage of mobiwatcher is potential application in home automation with its pre-built remote control feature. It is every easy to plug in a http X10 controller in our system to control the lights or small consumer appliance with cell phone.

Family system, a computer or a simple LAN, used to be just out-bound connection node, from which family users initialize only out-going requests to download music, upload pictures or just surf web.

But things changed recently with the embedded system evolution and IP based service expansion. The family system starts to take in-bound connection to handle requests. Typical application for such in-bound connection can be found in P2P games, VOIP and IP video surveillance.

Take IP video surveillance as example, a web server running in an embedded device and server the in-coming request for real time video, snapshot, recorded images or administration tasks. Service is supposed to be more vulnerable than non service application because it will open more ports and take in information from outside, which can be malicious.

An embedded device running open service such as ftp, web deployed in family environment can impose great security threat on regular family users. The reasons can be briefly summed as following:

1. Family system is the least protected end point in the WWWW world. No professional system admin, no commercial grade firewall, no password and security policy.
2. Family users are regulars users without much knowledge how to protect their network, and how to detect the attack.
3. Most services running in embedded system are implemented loosely  without security in the first place
4. For an embedded system, the end to end connection channel protection is impossible. The standard SSL just does not work for embedded system, the reason for that SSL related to Domain name and there is impossible to deploy SSL certificate in embedded system with a dynamic IP address, also there  is no one will  pay and renew certificate after the device is shipped.

No matter how an IP camera brag its security feature, it can be very easily to be tampered if somebody really want to, because if there is no protection in the whole transportation channel, the device is regarded no protection. Same for other embedded device with open services running.

However, the security flaw for embedded is not really this significant as it sounds. The reason is the limited ability for an embedded system, because a tampered embedded system won’t be harmful as a desktop system.