Y-cam Eyeball security camera review
Compact and flexible camera for home and small office intrusion security
Review date: 14 October, 2011. Review by: Paul Lester
Security cameras and remote monitoring aren't just for large companies, with affordable solutions now available for homes and small businesses. Y-cam's EyeBall is a straightforward solution that's perfectly suited to these environments, and offers significant peace of mind for those who a bit of extra security for the home or office.
Mounting and installation
The Eyeball comes with a full mounting kit that allows it to be semi-permanently set indoors on a ceiling or wall. Slightly larger than a tennis ball, and including a cigarette-packet sized control box that needs to be connected to a mains supply, it may not be the tidiest solution for home use compared to miniature alternatives - but with basic DIY skills you should be able to find a way to install the product unobtrusively. The flexible camera unit allows for easy adjustment after fitting, and additional mounting points on the control box will help ensure everything holds snugly in place.
Setup and configuration
Setup involves temporarily connecting the EyeBall control box to a router using the supplied network cable, at which point the device should be detected by the Camera Setup application. From here you can access all of the features and settings of the device via a web browser, and more importantly configure wireless access using the straightforward setup wizard, thereby allowing you to relocate it anywhere within range of a wireless router.
This part of the setup is very straightforward, but inexperienced users may find it a little more difficult to configure the camera so it can be viewed over the Internet or on a mobile phone. Thankfully, the supplied quick start manual does a good job of explaining this in a clear fashion - and with a bit of luck it should be fully up and running in around 30 minutes.
From here you may want to tweak the various settings available through the software, though the default options, for most, should be sufficient. You can change the image quality from 640x480 (at 30fps) down to 160x120, zoom in and out of a live image, take screenshots, record the current view and adjust the volume of the built in microphone if necessary.
More advanced settings allow you to flip or mirror an image, enable 'moonlight' mode to cater for low-light conditions, and customise stream quality for various mediums (such as utilising a lower-quality stream for mobile phone viewing, via a free app available for Symbian, iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms).
You can also tweak motion sensitivity to help avoid 'false alarms', when it comes to the movement sensor reporting activity in a location - though in our tests we found it pretty effective at ignoring small movements anyway, such as a curtain blowing in the wind.
Once all this is done it's possible to view a live feed from the camera from a web browser on any device connected to the internet, simply by entering the relevant IP address and access code.
Company: Y-Cam
Website: http://www.y-cam.com/y-cam-eyeball/
Contact: Y-Cam on 020 8334 7373
