While Logitech Alert can display all six feeds simultaneously in a grid (which, by the way, is slick as heck), I'd like to see (or haven't found) the option to simply toggle between all six views in order, continuously. Many security systems have a way for the system to toggle between each camera in rotation in full screen. I did find a few features I would have liked to have seen, and so here's a short wish list for future versions. I've been using the system for a few weeks now, and with the exception of the remote monitoring functions mentioned above, I'm quite impressed. I haven't had time to reset everything to see if it comes back online, but remote monitoring is definitely a bit more troublesome than local monitoring, which is rock-solid. Update: the Web interface has stopped showing one of the cameras claiming "Error getting camera settings", while the Commander PC-based interface works fine. In any case, it's a serious flaw and Logitech needs to step up and fix it before this solution can be a truly credible remote monitoring solution. A more cynical view is they're limiting the time the connection is live to save overhead at their data center. Presumably, Logitech thinks you'll get an email alert, and then want to see what's happening. You can check in and see what's going on, but you can't just keep an eye on things. This completely defeats the idea of having a browser window at work open all the time to see what's going on at home, or a Nexus 7 sitting on the night table to monitor the baby. You're actually presented with a display arrow that invites you to tap it to start monitoring again. What I mean by this is you start monitoring, and after 5-10 minutes, the monitoring stops. Logitech claims the cameras have built-in surge suppression, but we had one power failure recently which corrupted one of the SD cards: Here in Florida, we have many power fluctuations, and so everything (including our crock pot) has a UPS between it and the the power grid. While we're on the topic of installation, I need to point out that you can't plug the cameras or the central hub into a UPS. You might not need an electrician, but keep in mind that if you're touching the circuit breaker box, some ordinances require licensing to do the work (and, of course, if you don't know what you're doing, you could be in for a nasty shock). Since I needed everything installed to code, I used the same licensed electrician we used to run our power infrastructure and GigE to install the Alert system. The HomePlug system is a security win as well, since the wire that extends outside the house to the camera isn't on the internal LAN, it's effectively firewalled into the camera's own private HomePlug network. Since I operate my office from home, that was a necessity. As a result, we've got a power infrastructure normally more suited to a small data center than a house. We pretty much gutted it and rebuilt it to my geeky specifications. As I've mentioned before, when we bought this house, it was a fixer-upper in the worst way. That's why I had to involve an electrician. While this might be easy installation, having the camera's power right under the camera kind of defeats the whole security concept. In fact, on the instructions, Logitech has a somewhat silly illustration showing a cable running from the outside camera, down the side of a building, to an exposed power socket. Logitech recommends a similar procedure for outside cameras. Certainly for an indoor camera, all you do is plug a cable into the camera and into the power brick, and plug that into the wall. Installation is, in theory, quite simple. At about 2GB a week, a relatively small amount of storage can store pretty nearly a year without blinking. The Commander software allows you to set a maximum amount of storage, and then deletes older recordings.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |