Shelves | Consumer Product Reviews

There are numerous gains with owning an indoor and outdoor camera such as the Panasonic BL-C230A Wireless Internet Security Camera.

You may be hesitant in purchasing one, due to the hassle of having to install them, but home security cameras are reasonably easy to install. There are a great number of cameras out there, the key is finding the one that will serve your purpose. You may place wireless cameras on your walls, ceilings, and shelves, and may plug them into your TV, VCR, DVR, or even your wireless router. There are cameras available with sensors that will observe a modify in movement, sound, and galore even detect a alter in body temperature. Once the camera detects a change, it will activate, and the camera will get started recording, or capturing still frames. You will then be alerted, through respective methods.

Wanting to keep your family and home safe, is in all likelihood the main reason you started looking into purchasing security cameras. They do help deter burglars. If a person who has been ‘eying’ your house to undertake and break in, notices your surveillance cameras, they will most likely back off, for fear of being seen or recorded. When you do get a person who does undertake and break into your home, the camera will observe their motion and without delay alert you, permitting you to stop the burglar before they even enter your home. Not only will you have averted getting a victim but you now have video footage or still frames of the individual, making it requiring little effort for the police to distinguish them.

You might of decisive to buy a security camera, after seeing a rise in forced entry robbery incidents. For those who still do not recognise what that means, it is when a bold person knocks on your front door, waits for you to open your door to attack you and strength their way into your home. Sound scary? Installing a security camera that points to your door, you may protect yourself and your family, by seeing who is at your door, through your TV monitor without having to open the door.

Placing security cameras outdoors, may also concede you to supervise what goes on around you, even when you are not watching. The camera may even capture incidents such as a break in at your neighbors home,depending on how close your homes are to each other, or a distrustful person lurking outside of your home. Incidents that might have gone unnoticed, without a security camera.

While the main reason, that people would want to buy and install security cameras is in all probability to minimize the crime around your property, they may likewise have a lot of more beneficial purposes. An outdoor camera, may grant you to watch your children play outside while you are inside the house finishing up chores. You may make sure they do not wander into the streets, and even watch who started a fight amid them, without them knowing you are observing them.

If you have little children in your home, then installing a camera in your home, may concede you to work without worrying what may be happening to them when you are not around. Placing tiny cameras that are cloaked as each day items such as a clock or radio around your home, may let you monitor your children when they are with the babysitter or nanny.

With a camera such as Panasonic BL-C230A Wireless Internet Security Camera, you may have peace of mind knowing you are competent to keep an eye on your home even when you are sleeping, out working, or even when you are taking a vacation.

Panasonic Bl C210a Internet Security Camera

Panasonic BL-C210A Internet Security Camera

Do you most times worry regarding things at home while you’re at work or on vacation? Save your worries with Remote Monitoring by Panasonic Home Network Camera. Panasonic network cameras let you monitor your room over the Internet from wherever you are. They even notify you by e-mail when they observe moving objects. And you may choose the video format to match the Internet connection and your looking at needs. Let Panasonic network cameras keep an eye on things – anytime, anyplace – so you may relax and take delight in yourself.

The little and discreet profile fits closely anyplace in your home or office.

A Camera with the Ability to See, Hear, Feel and Interact
Introducing the Panasonic BL-C210—the most recent addition to the Panasonic Network Camera family. The crystal clear video effigy is easy to access right from your PC or hand-held device. An on-screen user interface with the capacity to pan, tilt, and zoom allows you to adjust camera view wherever you may be. And with Triple Sensor technology detecting changes in sound, motion, and body heat, this camera is the next best thing to being two places at once.

Triple Sensor Technology
The Panasonic BL-C210 camera offers a Triple Sensor with the capacity to track changes in movement, sound, and body temperature in your indoor atmospheres. When the Triple Sensor is activated, an instant email alert is sent directly to your mobile phone or PC with a captured effigy from your network camera.

Body Heat Sensor –

Motion Sensor -

Sound Sensor –

Connection and Monitoring
The BL-C210 is a wired model that ought to be connected to the router of your home or office. A proprietary POE connector is included for simple connection. Your network camera user interface may be accessed right from your PC or mobile phone. Panasonic Network Camera has built-in memory storage for security and personal purposes. Refer to your captured videos and images to monitor live-in nannies, office activity, or store employees. Share videos of your loved ones with family and friends.

The BL-C210 is also compatible with Panasonic’s Viera Cast™ Televisions. With a few easy clicks of the remote, watch up to eight connected cameras around your home or office. The following Panasonic HDTVs will aid BL-C210 Network Camera:

TC-PG10 series with 42, 46, 50, and 54-inch screen
TC-PG15 series with 42, 46, and 50-inch screen
TC-PV10 series with 50, 54, 58, and 65-inch screen
TC-P54Z1

Convenient Internet access provides peace of mind while you’re away.

See There When You Can’t Be There
The convenience, simple installation, and instant email alerts in this dependable video monitoring system make for peace of mind…at the click of a button.

BL-C210 H.264/MPEG-4 Network Camera Features

Image transfer by timer, alarm, motion, sound or humane presence
Plug & Play installation
Access thru hand-held device or PC
No PC required on site
Email alert notifications
H.264 compression for high quality images
Built-in memory for storing images and video

What’s in the Box
BL-C210 camera, AC Adapter, Power Transfer Unit, Set-up CD-ROM, Screws (6), Washers (4), Safety Wire, and Installation Guide

Most helpful customer reviews

98 of 99 people found the following review helpful.
Panasonic BL-C210A Network Camera
By Easy-G
Bought this camera through one of Amazon’s Gold Box Deals for $130. For the price, it’s a great camera. This is my second Panasonic network camera. A few years ago I bought their BL-C1A model Panasonic Network Camera and Pet Cam (BLC1A). The BL-C210A is a much nicer camera. The picture image is several times better, especially when motion is involved. You have the option of pan and tilt to look around. You can disable the indicator lights on the camera that lets you know the camera is on. You can also disable or override the privacy mode button on top of the camera. You can configure the camera to email you a picture when it detects motion in your house. Now how’s that for peace of mind while you’re away? And my favorite is that the camera is powered through the network cable which eliminates the need for a power outlet near the camera. The camera has a threaded mounting hole in the back that can be used to mount the camera to a standard tripod or an optional wall mount. The cube design is nice because it allows you to just set the camera on a shelf or table. The camera is light, so a tug on the network cable can bring it crashing down if it’s not secured.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
A Way To Monitor Your Burglar Alarm
By Stephen M. Prescott
A year or so ago, we installed an Ademco burglar alarm which we found we could not hook up to a monitoring service because we had dropped our landline. There are services that will monitor your alarm system through the cell phone network but they are expensive. So I decided to make a project out of this. I would find a way to monitor the alarm system with zero net monthly cash outlays. I spent idle hours wondering how I might cobble together some homemade piece of equipment that can capture the alarm signal off the Ademco and fire a programmable event on one of our computers through a USB port or something like that. Tricky stuff. Iffy.

Then I discovered the fact that this ip camera (as well as many others) have e-mailing functionality. After a little research I bought a couple and they are now in service. I connected the bell circuit on my Ademco, through a relay switch, to one of the two open alarm circuits on the Panasonic and now whenever the Ademco sends an alarm, we receive an e-mail with an alarm message plus, as a bonus, a photo of what the camera is seeing at the time. When we get the e-mail, we can go online either with a computer or our cell phone and see what is going on in the house. If the situation merits, we can then call the police or we can ask the neighbor to peek over. This is intelligent alarm monitoring as opposed to the automated kind you get when your alarm system sends a signal to the monitoring station every time the system is tripped for whatever reason (I read that almost all reports sent to the police by these systems are false and are placed on low priority). I am going to document this system and send it to my insurance agent asking for a premium discount in line with the standard discount you get with automated monitoring. We have achieved our goal of a no-cost alarm notification system.

Two very good features of this unit are that you do not have to have a running computer to make it work and it receives its power over the ethernet cable. As long as your run is less than 98 feet, you can snake cable through your walls to your heart’s content without worrying about how you will power the camera.

Since this camera has, in addition to its ability to take a signal from your burglar alarm, its own internal motion-heat-sound detectors, you could also use it as a sort of burglar alarm all by itself. But it does not have the capability to act as a perimeter alarm as would be the case if you have an alarm system with door and/or window sensors. And it does not turn on sirens to 1.) wake you up, 2.) scare the intruders away or 3.) if they are not scared away, heighten the level of insanity that is already going on in their minds.

Like the others, I find that the camera does not perform well in low light. But I have several lamps in our home that are hooked up to X-10 switches. These X-10s are programmed through the burglar alarm to turn on when the alarm goes off. I have not tested them with the camera yet but I am hoping that they will provide enough light to let us see what is going on in the event of an alarm.

There is one glaring vulnerability in all of this: your camera gives you notification and visual access through the internet; your house connects to the internet through a wire; burglars know how to snip a wire with a wire cutters and the more experienced burglars are going to do this before they attempt to break in. I circumvented this problem by changing my ISP. My new ISP connects the internet to my house wirelessly and that fixes that. If you do not have the wireless option, however, this issue needs to be addressed. Many alarm systems now can be fitted with an auxiliary backup device that calls you and/or the police through the cell phone network if your wire is cut. They cost extra both for the equipment and the ongoing use of the cell phone network.

We got a lot of value for our money here. It proved to be an elegant solution to our problem and added many more features to boot. I love gadgets and my heart sings whenever I see it up in the corner of my living room ceiling with its lights blinking down on me. What other people might think is ‘beyond the scope of this review’.

ON PANASONIC SUPPORT: I’m not going to lower the rating on this camera because I think it is a fine product. But I will say that Panasonic support falls far short of the mark. In trying to get the camera viewable over the internet, I talked to 4 different representatives each of whom offered a different solution all of which were wrong. I wrote them a letter a week ago with no reply so far. So I did what I should have initially done which is to learn a little networking, specifically port forwarding. After my research and armed with some actual knowledge, I set up the cameras properly and they are now humming along. I can credit the reviewer who praised Panasonic support. However, that was not my experience. All these people had to do was to ask the right questions and then tell me what to do to configure the system properly. It took me, an amateur, a couple of hours to figure it out on my own and yet all four of these professionals failed to come up with the correct solution. And yes, I am fully aware that this is partly a result of a lack of committment on the part of management and not entirely the fault of the individual on the other end of the phone. 1-14-2011 UPDATE: Yesterday, I came across a puzzling issue having to do with sending sensor messages from the camera to our Panasonic Viera TV. Since I already know how good they are at fielding support requests over the telephone and through the postal service, I thought it might be interesting to send them an e-mail message via their website. The model of the camera was stated in the e-mail by way of the e-mail setup fields and I gave the model of the TV in the body of the e-mail. Later that day, I received this reply which I quote in full: ‘Thank you for your inquiry. What is the model # to your cameras? If you have any additonal questions or concerns, please contact our technical support hotline at [...]. Thank you for choosing Panasonic.’ Additional questions indeed.

SETUP NOTE: If your network sits behind two in-line routers (one connected directly to the internet through the phone or cable TV wires, the ‘outside’ router; the other sitting between the outside router and the LAN: the ‘inside’ router) and you are having a hard time of it, identify both the public and private IP address of the inside router. Do a little googling to get yourself squared away on what the public and private IP addresses of a router are. Then, when you are setting up port forwarding on the outside router, you need to forward requests to the public not the private IP address of the inside router. Then use the private IP address of the inside router as the Default Gateway in your camera settings. There are other pitfalls but this particular one was my mine.

See all 48 customer reviews…