Linksys WVC54GCA Webcam 640x480 802.11G Wireless Internet Home Monitoring Camera

The latest camera in the Linksys WVC54 series (GCA) is amazing in resolution and sets up fairly easily. The new software that comes with it allows viewing up to nine cameras simultaneously and it works with Vista, something the previous "quad" viewer couldn't do.
But the most impressive thing about the camera is the ability to see it from anywhere in the world, not only with the viewer on a computer, but also through cell phones, Windows Media Player, Real... AND the new iTouch device! The previous cameras in this line required Activ-X to be running, something Apple won't touch. But now with the WVC54GCA, you can view your security cameras while sitting at Panera having lunch... or anywhere there is a WiFi hot spot.
This camera does a true 640-480 picture up to 30fps, depending on bandwidth available.
Setup requires some experience with routers and you probably will need a port forwarding (DDNS) setup such as TZO.
I have four cameras with local IPs starting at 192.168.1.115. Going up sequentially from there (.116,.117,.118). I set these as static IPs in the router, a Linksys WRT160N V3.
Available ports on PCs can be 1024, 1044, 2869 and 5445.

I recently bought the camera and after I read the review, I decided to try the camera and judge for myself. If you are not computer literate, this camera is not for you. If you are this camera is perfect. Installing the camera and making it connect to my router was a bit tricky. It was not a walk in the park, but i contacted Linksys customer support and they were able to walk me through the installation process with no problem. By the way the customer support for Linksys is outstanding. I did the live chat and it was great. He walked me through the process and after an hour my camera was working perfectly. After a few days, with no glitches or problem I decided to buy another camera. Installation of the second camera was easy. The online live feed of my camera is amazing, especially for how much i paid for it. I love the camera, the software and I recommend it for the budget minded seekers.

I just received this camera, and within a day or so had it set up to be viewable over the internet (even on my iphone), so i was ecstatic! But then, i started noticing the problems. Given the low price, it is still worth it, but you should be aware of them before you buy:

1) Security is barely there: you can access the camera web pages from a browser with no password. then, even if you setup a password for accessing the video, there is simple URL you can go to that will show all the users and passwords in plain text to anyone.
2) It needs to be un-plugged and re-plugged at least once a day for it to continue to work.
3) the client software doesn't work on a mac, not even with vmware running windows XP. It is unable to find the camera, but a pc on the same network can find it fine. You need a pc to set it up (to be fair, it does say so in the product description as well)
4) although you can access live "streaming" video from any browser (including the iphone), you can only get the sound if you access it from IE in windows.
5) its "motion detector" feature results in many false positives, so use sparingly. In addition, the emails it sends have the wrong time on them.

Therefore, it is in dire need of new firmware, but given all of the complaints above are well documented on the linksys website (in the forums), it doesn't look like they are actively working on it...

Bottom line: too bad they don't fix the firmware or most people who have one of them would buy a couple more :-)

Overall the this wireless camera is good, and works with Macs - although it is not supported, once you know the default IP address you can set up the camera with any web browser really, and the PC software is only truly necessary if you have several of those.
The only drawback I find is that the picture quality is not great. Compared to the built-in webcam of recent Macs for instance. I have tried all different settings and it is never super sharp.

the most wonderful camaera I have usee, and I have a duel pro camera system at work and this camera makes it look like a kids toy/