How to Setup the D-Link DCS-933L and use it with Sensr.net
The D-Link DCS-933L
The D-Link DCS-933L is a great IP camera because of it’s price. It doesn’t pan or tilt which means you have less options when you choose where to put it and you will have to go physically move the camera anytime you want to change where it is looking but you do save some money. The DCS-933L also has night vision which is obviously very important if you are hoping to use your camera for security purposes. The setup here is pretty similar to the rest of the DCS-900 series. We have a tutorial for setting up the DCS-930L. With this tutorial you should be able to get this camera set up quickly and easily.
I’ll also show you how to push images to Sensr.net so you can take advantage of all of our cool features, like SMS and email alerts, 30 days archiving, no firewall config, clip sharing, embedable live streams, guest access, etc.
This setup involves four steps:
- Plug in your DCS-933L and connect it to the internet.
- Access your DCS-933L through your web browser
- Add a new Camera on Sensr.net
- Enter your new FTP credentials into your DCS-933L
When you are connecting your camera to the internet you have two choices: wired or wireless. Wireless is possible if your router supports WPS connections. To establish a wireless connection plug in your camera and hold down the WPS button on the back of your camera; the blue WPS status light will start blinking. You now have sixty seconds to press the WPS button on your wireless router which will be located either somewhere on the router or on the router’s web access page.
If your router does not support WPS then you will need to plug in via an ethernet connection. Simply plug your camera’s power cord into a normal wall outlet and ethernet port into a normal ethernet connection.
Access your DCS-933L through your web browser:
Once you are hooked up to an internet connection just go to your routers access page by typing the IP address of your router into your internet browser. You can find the IP address of your router on your computers settings. On my mac I go to to Network Settings > Advanced > TCP/IP, and it looks like this:
Once you are on your router’s access page just look for the new item and grab the IP address. This is the IP address of your DCS-933L. Enter that into your browser and it will bring you to D-Link’s network access page. It will ask you for a username and password which are admin and admin. You should change those. It should look something like this:
DCS-930L’s Admin page
With access to this page you can make the changes to the camera you will need to use it with Sensr.net. Keep this page open and go to a new tab and open your Sensr.net account.
Add a new Camera on Sensr.net:
Login to Sensr.net using your email and password. If you don’t have an account, you can add one for free on the sign up page. Once you’re logged in, just click the Add Camera button in green:
Next you will see a page asking you to give some information about the camera. Some of this stuff is important as it helps get the schedule right. The rest is important because it will help you know which camera is which should you choose to add more. It should look like this:
Name your camera and give us some basic info about it.
Once you press next step it will take you to a page giving you your new FTP credentials. These are very important and make it so your camera will know to send the images to us. The page will look like this:
FTP credentials
Keep this page open so you won’t forget the credentials. Of course you can always open this page again should you accidentally close it.
Enter your new FTP credentials into your DCS-933L:
Go back to the Network Access page for your DCS-933L. Click on “SETUP” on the top menu and then “FTP” on the side. You’ll then be at a page that looks like this:
DCS-5010L FTP setup page
The red arrows above show the settings you need to configure. Under Host Name add the FTP server name you got from the add camera page on sensr.net. Copy the user name and password as well. Make sure to select “Passive Mode”, we only support passive FTP on Sensr.net.
You also need to tell your camera to send images to Sensr.net on a schedule. You do this by selecting the check box “Enable uploading to the FTP server” and confirm that “Always” and “1 Frames/Second”
are selected. These are the defaults and seem to work well. The other default’s for the file name are also well supported, so no reason to change them.
Make sure to click the “Save Settings” button at the top of the page.
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 Next Step button to see the images coming in from your camera. You should see a page something like this:
Waiting for upload
To this:
Success!
Now that you have the camera setup, here are some other things you can do:
- Add motion alerts via SMS or email
- Invite guests to view your private camera
- Embed the live stream on your blog or other website
- Create a clip and share it on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube
If you have any problems or questions, just click the Feedback button on the right side of every Sensr.net page and ask us a question. We usually respond quickly and try hard to get back within 24 hours at the latest.