Product Reviews

If you worry about your home when you're out, a home-monitoring service could help you relax. Myhome247 combines hardware sensors and an internet account to keep you informed of events in your absence. The Starter Kit consists of an IP network camera, a door sensor and a central control unit.

It's easy to set up, and anyone who's configured a wireless network will have no trouble. You'll need two spare Ethernet ports on your router, and more if you want to add extra cameras. After plugging the hardware into your router, simply log into your account at the Myhome247 website. It quickly registers your devices, and you can rename them if desired. There's a wide range of optional extras, such as motion sensors and alarms. The sensors are wireless and communicate directly with the control unit. The cameras have wired network connections, so you'll need to use Powerline networking if you want them in different rooms.

You can access your account from any computer with an internet connection. The main interface is easy to use and gives you lots of options. You can create macros to link one device to another. For example, you can set the camera to start recording if the front door sensor is triggered. You can also program times when the system will automatically activate

The service can email you alerts; you select which ones, and how often. Alternatively, you can buy SMS credits for 15p each and receive selected alerts directly to your mobile phone. You can view a camera's live feed on a Java-compatible mobile phone using a downloadable program. You'll have to pay your operator's rates for the data received, and video played at about 1fps on our GPRS handset. The mobile program also lets you activate and deactivate individual devices remotely.

The supplied Panasonic BL-C1 camera can take photos or video when it detects movement. Alternatively, you can watch a live video stream via your account. Despite the camera being capable of a 640x480 resolution, pictures and video are limited to a resolution of 320x240. This keeps bandwidth down for those with slow connections and mobile phone users, but we would have liked the option to use the maximum resolution. The kit comes with 5MB of data storage for free. Additional storage is expensive, though, at £10 a month for 50MB, or £12 a month for 250MB.

Using this Starter Kit alone, you're likely to be bombarded with alerts from both the camera and door sensor, as they have no way of discerning family members from intruders. You could set up timers on your devices to avoid some of these alerts, but you're better off buying a Keypad Kit for £26 including VAT. This will let you disarm all devices before entering the property.

This home-monitoring service is easy to set up and keeps you well informed. The only downsides are the low image resolution and expensive storage upgrades. The kit price is reasonable, and it's useful to have a single support number to call should anything go wrong.