How you use IP cameras

If you’ve never owned an IP camera before, you may not be familiar with how they work. So here’s a quick primer on consumer IP cameras:

An IP camera connects to your home network, rather than your PC. You either plug an Ethernet cable in and connect it to your router (for those cameras that have Ethernet), or you configure it to talk to your Wi-Fi network. To set up the latter, the camera typically creates its own hotspot on first setup — connect to that to talk to the camera, then tell the camera to talk to your main Wi-Fi network. Alternatively, some wireless cameras can be set up by showing them QR codes. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of cameras: fixed and motorised. The latter includes a motor that lets you remotely control the direction the camera is facing. The IP camera has its own internal web server. If you visit its IP address in a web browser, you’ll be able to see the live feed from the camera as well as adjust the settings. More commonly, you’ll actually use a mobile or desktop app to access the feed and control it. Cameras usually don’t come with any internal storage for recording the feed, though many allow you to insert a memory card. It won’t record every moment (that would fill a memory card very quickly), instead you’ll typically configure recording or still-image capture based on events like motion detection, camera tampering or facial recognition. For example, if it detects someone at your door, it can be set to take a photo of them or record 15 seconds of video and send you an email notification with the attached grab. You can also use a PC, network video recorder (NVR) appliance or NAS (network attached storage) to grab and record streams. NAS boxes from QNAP, Synology, Asustor, Seagate and Thecus all come with ‘surveillance manager’ apps that can monitor and capture streams from multiple IP cameras. There are many desktop PC apps that will do the same. Nearly every consumer IP camera also talks to a cloud service. This cloud service lets you tunnel through your router’s firewall, letting you view the stream from anywhere. In some cases, the cloud service will also offer online storage for captured clips and images. Most cameras now also have active night vision — IR emitters that can create a monochrome image of a room even if the room is totally dark. The range of the night vision is usually 5m or so, but some cameras can go better.