Recently I have been experimenting with the use of net cams to allow me to keep an eye on things when I'm away from home. Net cams (as opposed to web cams) generally contain enough processing to operate as a stand-alone device on a network with their own built-in web server. You don't need a PC (apart from the configuration) and many of them can e-mail and ftp images and store captured video on a network file server. All these things tend to push up the price to several hundred pounds. The Y-cam Knight seemed to have the features I wanted but at a reasonable price. I decided to give it a try so here is a summary of my experiences with it so far.

Here's what you get in the box. The mains adapter has a number of different country options that clip in. I didn't have any problem snapping in the UK version and powering things up. The first thing I did was connect via Ethernet to my router. It was configured to support a DHCP address pool so the camera could acquire an address without any problems. I decided I didn't want to bother installing the software that came with the camera. I generally prefer to avoid this sort of thing as it tends to clutter up the PC with stuff I don't really need. The camera is designed to support a web browser so the only challenge is to find its initial IP address. A quick look on the router reveals the list of connected devices and their addresses.

So the steps I went through in configuration were as follows:

1. Access the camera home page by typing its IP address (as discovered from the router) into the browser
2. Configure a suitable static IP address within the home network range
3. Configure wireless access with the security password for the network
4. Set an admin password and specific user accounts and passwords
5. System name
6. Enable on screen display with date and time
7. Disable RTSP on streams
8. Set up suitable secondary stream rates
9. Disconnect the Ethernet link and re-boot - the camera then connects via wireless on the new address

The camera does support uPnP which in theory would allow it to establish connections through my router. However, I wasn't particularly confident about trying to do this - especially after reading some mixed reviews of the reliability. Instead I configured my router manually and opened a port to route through to the IP address of the camera. I also set up a DDNS provider account and configured my router with this so that I could access it from the Internet. I had a few problems with my router initially (Belkin) and it would stop allowing connections the second time I tried to access the camera. I had to re-configure the port each time. After a couple of experiments using different port numbers, however, I was able to get reliable results. Not sure if this is a quirk of the router.

Here are some sample stills from the camera to illustrate what the quality is like. The first is a daytime shot and gives an idea of the colour cast that is mentioned in the manual. It is a feature of the filters used in the lens and apparently a penalty of having very good infra-red response.

At night the infra-red LEDs illuminate the scene and give really good night vision. I've marked the range of the most distant items that are still visible in the scene.

Close range shots are also quite reasonable.

To use the Y-cam outdoors needs a weatherproof case. The shell does that job pretty well and looks to be very well constructed with a sturdy adjustable bracket. It comes supplied with a length of power and Ethernet cable and the various screws etc to install it.

You do need to disassemble the shell in order to install the camera but the instructions are clear enough. One point to remember, though, is that there are two variations you can follow in the assembly process to support different camera models. I've read comments from a few people that they had problems with the night-vision failing when using the shell. This has turned out to be because they had followed the wrong instructions and failed to remove the lens cover that the shell provides for some cameras. The shell is a bit bigger that you might imagine from photos. I've shown a picture here next to a ruler to give some scale.