Product Reviews

Linksys's latest wireless IP camera is one of the cheapest we've seen. It's still considerably more expensive than a webcam, but it can do significantly more and it doesn't require a PC to be left on for it to work.

The WVC54GCA's black plastic case means it will be hard to hide in your home, but it's relatively small and lightweight. The bundled stand can also be screwed into the rear of the camera for wall mounting, but you'll have to supply the hooks or screws yourself.

The camera has a maximum resolution of 640x480 at 30fps. There's a choice of MPEG4 and MJPEG codecs, the latter requiring less bandwidth at the expense of quality. You can also enable streaming to a mobile phone, which limits the resolution to 160x120 at 15fps.

Installing the WVC54GCA is a breeze. You simply connect it to your router using the bundled network cable and run the CD-based setup wizard. This guides you through finding the camera on the network, naming it, choosing whether to have a dynamic or fixed IP address and changing the default password. It then searches for wireless networks and prompts you to choose yours and enter its password. There are

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clear instructions for unplugging both the network and power cables, then reconnecting power to switch over to a wireless connection. If everything works as it should, you will see a 'Success' message. Even though we weren't testing on a Linksys router, we had no problems.

Logging on to the camera's web server brought up options to view the live video or go to the advanced options. These include creating users who have permission to view the video or adjust the settings, configuring motion detection and altering wireless, image quality and streaming settings.

If you want to view the camera's video and audio over the internet, you'll need to forward ports in your router's firewall. However, it's slightly disappointing that the only dynamic DNS provider is TZO (which is a paid-for service) rather than DynDNS.com (which is free). This isn't a problem if your router has its own DDNS function, though. It's useful to have the option to set an alternate HTTP port, especially if you have multiple cameras.

Motion-detection settings include the ability to set up to three areas for detection, or the full frame. You can set the detection sensitivity individually for each area; watch out, though, because the sliders are the opposite way round to what you might expect. You can set schedules so that motion detection operates only at certain times.

There's the option to email a JPEG or a short video clip (up to seven seconds) when motion is detected to three email addresses of your choice, but bear in mind that you'll need access to an SMTP server to do this.

Thanks to its simple installation, good video and audio quality, and relatively low price, Linksys's WVC54GCA is a fine choice if you are after an IP camera.