Panasonic BL-C140A Outdoor POE Network Camera On Sale @ Amazon
The [
The]1 for $148.99, normally priced at $199.95.
It’s great that this camera comes with a POE adapter so you can power it over an ethernet cable. However, it doesn’t work with standard POE switches, which is a pain. If you already have a POE switch then you can’t power this camera from that switch, you still need to use their (included) power block. Ugh, just what I need, another little transformer wasting electricity in my basement.
Also, it’s a pain to setup on Mac or Linux. After about 30 minutes of trying to find the camera on my network by looking at my router’s DHCP table, I finally pulled out an old dusty Windows PC and ran the setup routine. It found the IP address for me and that was enough. Once I had the IP address, I was able to configure the camera from my Mac’s browser. Hey hardware manufacturers, please use standard mechanisms to setup your hardware. You know, like DHCP and HTTP. Not everyone has a Windows PC around to run you buggy setup software.
That said, the camera’s video quality isn’t bad, and $150 for an outdoor POE camera is a pretty good deal. You can see one of our more popular Panasonic CL-140A cameras here @ The Homestead Trail Cam.
This camera works well with sensr.net by using the built in FTP upload functionality. This article will show you how to setup the BL-C140A as well as the BL-C230A so you can use either with Sensr.net, giving you all the advantages of the sensr.net site, like archiving, alerts, and sharing.
Add a New Camera to your Sensr.net Account
“Add New Camera” Setup Page
- FTP server,
- FTP Username, and
- FTP Password.
These three items of information need to be entered into the camera.
Tell your Camera about Sensr.net
Now you need to configure your camera so it will send images to sensr.net. You should have already setup your camera on your home network. To configure the camera, you simply log into the camera’s admin page by pointing your browser to the IP address of your camera. Click the setup tab shown below.
From the trigger page, select one of the trigger numbers (1-5) and click on the numeral. It will then take you to this page where you check Enable Image Buffer/Transfer and selectTimer from the pull down menu.
Click next and you will see the page below, where you tell the camera to send an image per second, always, every day of the week. You can select the image resolution you want, but generally higher resolution is better. The BL-C230A’s maximum resolution is 640×480, which we recommend using. Under Image Buffer Frequency select “1s” and “1″ image. This will tell the camera to send an image per second to sensr.net. For the transfer method select “FTP“.
When you’ve made these changes, click the next button.
At this point you are done. You can close the browser window pointed at your camera and go back to Sensr.net. Click on the “Take Me To My Camera” button to see the Gallery view of images coming from your camera.
Now you can share your camera and its images with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Have fun!