The DCS-5300W is a powerful surveillance system that connects to a wired Ethernet or Enhanced 802.11b wireless connection.
1 An Awesome Camera with Ro-Bitchen Features!
This thing is like a little robot eye. I can pan and tilt and digital zoom all from a web browser on my networked PC. The image quality is good, the wireless range is good, the features are quite robust, and it even looks good.
You can mount it upside down and have it flip the image it sees, thus still showing everything "right side up". The digital zoom was added with a firmware upgrade. The price is a little daunting, but if you are going to put it to good use I think you would enjoy this camera.
2 A Top Quality Camera with Awesome Features!
I like this camera very much. I wish there was more documentation on it though. I want to know what every setting does and how it does it. I want to build programs/PHP scripts that "interact" with this camera and allow for image archiving or other neat little features. But I haven't found the time to research all that.
Installation of this camera was fairly simple, although a little bumpy getting the wireless to work right. But in the end I got it working just fine, and it's stable now. The features this camera does have blows a lot of other cameras out of the water. There is the Dynamic DNS, which I use all the time, the FTP uploads which are great, and the pan and tilt all at this price are wonderful features.
I'd suggest going to D-Link's product page for this product and clicking on the Emulator link as that is where you can get a feel for the interface of this product. It is neatly laid out and gets the job done as far as minimal clicks goes. Nothing is deeply hidden, and everything is accessable in about 3-4 clicks max.
3 DCS-5300W not stable enough for monitoring
I finally got my DCS-5300W to work after upgrading to the most current firmware (v1.04) but the camera still keeps hanging just about every night. It is also constantly doing network reconnects. This makes the camera useless for a surveillance device but it is a great toy! DLink's support isn't any help either. It would be nice to talk to someone who has even seen a picture of the camera! Seems the support people have a script to follow and if that doesn't fix the problem, then tough luck. You bought it and they don't give refunds.
4 Easy to use and is Stable after Firmware Upgrade
I just upgraded my camera to the new 1.03 Firmware on D-Link's support site and the camera works better for me. I don't get the random freezes or disconnects anymore. I liked the camera before, but now it's just generally more responsive.
I too use this to monitor/watch my kids while they are at home and I am at work. The ports you need to open on your firewall/router to view this camera across the internet are 80 and 5001-5003. That's a total of 2 (two) rules you need to set. No big deal. Again D-Link's support page walks you through this quite easily.
The digital zoom feature is a nice touch, which was a free upgrade via firmware. Overall I believe D-Link has outdone themselves with a camera of this caliber. Although the new DCS-5300G sounds better just because it uses the 802.11g protocol for faster wireless transmissions. Although wired is fine for me, and I got this 802.11b camera for cheaper on eBay than I could find the wired version.
5 Not ready yet
This product may be the worse piece of technology I have ever gotten. It would routinely crash my networks (Tried it on 2 different ones). If used in wired mode, it can go from 1-3 days before bring down the network, if wireless 3-4 hours-I had to upgrade the firmware to make it this long on the wireless). Unit runs hot, and I doubt it will have a decent life expectancy anyways. Changing settings routinely lock up the system if doing so over the wireless connection. 802.11B is also lacking, but a telling indicator of Dlink's vision.
6 Solved my problem ...
I am using it to monitor kids from work and this is the only camera, which meet all my 3 prime requirements (Wireless, Pan/Tilt, CCD Image sensor).
Setup is a breeze, thought start off with configuring the camera in a ethernet / wired connect first, to setup the wireless and WEP configuration and settings.
The biggest challenge i had was with the PAN/Tilt motor, the movement was not smooth and at times would not happen, thought you could hear the motor grinding. Tech Support could not help , and advised returning it. BUT a generous dash of WD-40 got the motor movement problem resolved.
What Sucks
1. Video Image is poor, 640x480 type resolution would have been better
2. Build In Microphone , is kinda weak in picking up sound. Sound quality is audible only, if source is front ahead.
What's Cool
1. Motorized Pan/Tilt
2. Wireless Connectivity
There are better quality video and pan/tilt cameras (ex AXIS), but non i found that have wireless connectivity. If wireless is what you need, go for this.
7 Good Camera, but need to know how to config.
Pros: It is good camera, Sharp picture, remote control, digital zoom is average (need to download latest software 1.02)
Cons: Tech support of first two tiers won't be able to help you at all (they just read from the manual), unless you get someone at higher level, sometime your call get answer by foreign tech., it doesn't help either.
Bottom line: If you know well about networking, it should be no problem to config this cam to your existing net work and enjoy the cam, Need to know how to config between your DSL modem (IP forwarding) and Dlink wireless router (or other wireless router), and open the port. In order to access this cam remotely, must have static ip address. I actually gave up to call tech help and learn to config this cam by myself.
8 Plagued with problems
If you've read the other reviews, you know that this camera is "high maintenance" to say the least, but there are a few additional problems I encountered that are not yet documented here.
1. This device knocks all other systems off my network. If you place the camera too close to your wireless router, you may find that other devices (laptops, other brand cameras, and many other WiFi products) are constantly having to reconnect to the network. This is because the DCS-5300W is interfering with your router.
2. Configuration screens are poorly designed. The camera will send data via e-mail, but won't accept a POP3 username beyond 14 characters. This makes it impossible to use if you have a POP3 account that requires name@domainname.com format accounts. In addition, the motion sensor system and FTP setup are so bad that you'll have no idea if the camera has snapped a picture, or if it's been uploaded.
3. The uploaded pictures are unusable. I was hoping that I could set up a web page of "recently snapped pictures" but there's no file naming convention that will allow this on the camera.
In short, this wireless camera is really nothing more than a "gee wiz" device that you may not be able to even use with a wireless laptop (since you'll get booted off the network when the camera is powered up) and is desperately in need of a ROM update to address all of these issues.
9 Wait, wait, wait
After half a day of debugging and well meaning and courteus but poor tech support from D-Link I am returning the product. It has looks and behavior of a young product meant for early adopters. Since I need it for security I cannot be in debugging mode. There are many bugs each one of them jeopardizing the purpose of operating a security camera. Also, in previous reviews there is no mention of the sorry quality of the security application provided with the product. Unstable, clumsy, incomplete, unsupported.
If you want to teach yourself the technological pits of wireless video and security go ahead. Otherwise wait, wait, wait.
10 YES. GOOD BUT BE AWARE
I am giving 5 stars to the camera alone. If I had to rate the colaterals: Instructions, manuals, customer service, and intentional obstacles ...then It wont deserve more than 3 stars.
When correctly configured and "harmonized" within your network, the camera works very well. I dont know about your expectations but compared with others ccd cameras in the market the balance price/quality is unbeatable.
Since any critic must be 1) constructive to the maker and 2) helpful to other customers, following ...the details and tips:
Problem: Lack of information, Instructions and solutions to specific and commom problems experienced by most of the users.
**** Read Carefully what the other users who rated positively the camera, said about it and how they resolved the problems. Without all these tips I would have wasted hours to findout the solutions. Amazingly those issues are not yet in the Q&A at DLINK support site and neither complement pages for your manuals. Another Marketing Dude with a good monthly check but not a clue about the most fundamental Marketing disciplines.
Resuming:
**** Not only with the camera or Dlink... Any thing hooked to your PC or network must be updated with the most recent firmware. Here...No exceptions, and if you use diferent brands for your router and other net-gears then no option: Update the firmware.
**** If you are behind a router and you want use the DDNS than use the router's feature and not the camera one.
**** If you are using diferent brand for your router... WATCH OUT:
a) Transmission rate of the camera must be 11 Mbs. DLINK's ambitions must have let them think that most of the routers in the market are their own, so the 22 Mbs for the 802.11 b standard has been assumed.
b) If your using Linksys G router then adjust the basic rate (wireless advanced setup) to 1-2 Mps This will make it more compatible with all sort of exotic 11B devices.
c) Assign to the camera a static IP so you will be able to forward through the router, the necessary ports for Audio+Video
**** Customer Service:.... Have a translator from India before calling ( My english teatcher and friend Kamal is from India...so no hard feelings here ), and be sure that you are a beginer because if you are an advanced user you ll have to be patient and wait untill the dude finishes his script and then find out that you know more than him and it it is only then when you deserve a real tech. assistant. The dude will give you a code, forward your call and then when "the expert" takes the phone the call is lost. bip bip bip bip.....nnnnoooooooooo all this time wasted and I only got an "Indie-Tech" Language Class.
Hey Markting Dude This is again your department...uppps Remember...: No Emporwerment Without Ownership...you ll be soon in the toaster if you dont change something.
11 Decent little camera
I purchased my DCS-5300W in early April and so far I've been quite pleased with it. Be sure to download the latest firmware (1.02) version from D-Link's site. The initial version was a bit buggy causing problems such as the clock losing several minutes per day, and inconsistent results with the ftp feature.
A significant change with the new firmware is the removal of the camera pan and tilt feature from all users except the administrator. I thought this was a bug, but after speaking with a knowledgable tech, he informed me that this is one of the new features of the upgrade. I understand the logic behind this decision, but they should have removed the display of the pan and tilt icons for these non-admin userids.
I've had much success using the dynamic DNS service from DynDNS.org. I set my D-Link DI-624 router up to use a static IP address for the camera and activated the dynamic dns (DDNS) feature on the router, not the camera. My ISP assigned DHCP IP address has changed several times now, and the router DDNS feature has worked perfectly.
My only complaint would be the lack of an optical zoom capability. D-Link added digital zoom with the latest firmware upgrade but as we all know, digital zoom is vastly inferior to optical zoom.
12 Works great once you have it set up.
Now that I have it up and running, I love it. I have grown to know the D-link tech support crew fairly well over the past week. Most of them are really good, but if one of them can't figure out your problem, don't send the camera back like they may suggest. Call back later and try it with someone else. Overall the camera works exactly as described, but there are a few caveats.
1) If you plan on logging on to the camera from work (i.e. to peek in on your new baby), be aware that the camera requires more than just port 80. It also requires three other open ports and many corporate networks are locked down tight with regards to open ports. Grandma and Grandpa will be able to log on just fine from their home computer though.
2) The camera gets fussy when I try to use it in wireless mode and view it with a wireless laptop on the network (the ultimate baby monitor). It works great in wireless mode when viewed from a wired computer.
3) Only the administrator can control the movement of the camera. Guest or other camera viewers have to view the current position of the camera. I think this is a bug and will likely be fixed with firmware.
Overall it is a very good product and seems to be of high quality. The manual isn't too bad considering all of the different network configurations a user may have. I am happy with my purchase.
13 Watch your step.
I don't know where everyone is getting these cameras, but I purchased one a week ago from Amazon. It was the DCS-5300W. Or so it was sold to me as. However, once received I discoved I was sent from Tiger Direct, the 5300 only. No wireless!. I call Tiger Direct and they tell me the 5300W won't be available until June 11th and they cannot take back orders. I check Amazon again - and the camera is still being sold - but now at a higher price. Where are these cameras? I wish these distribution companies would sell what they advertise and only when it is available. What a mess.
14 Works pretty well once it's configured
After spending about 2 hours with D-Link tech support (this spanned 4 technicians of which 2 were tier 2 support), I was advised to exchange the unit I had for another because it just wouldn't get a valid IP address on my network (I use the Microsoft mn-700 router which is great). No matter what I did, the unit kept cycling thru IP address and wouldn't accept a valid one. It would just default to 192.168.0.99 and that address would be unreachable from my network which used (192.168.1.x). When the second unit arrived on exchange, it had the same problem. I called tech support again and finally spoke with someone competent. He advised temporarily changing the IP address of a PC on my network to 192.168.0.x and to try to configure the unit from that PC. That advice worked. I should've thought of this myself but so should the 4 techs I spoke to the first time.
Anyway, once I had connectivity to the unit, it was configured for wireless use in minutes and it works well. The video quality is good, the audio is decent. The range of pan/tilt is really impressive. The digital zoom is mediocre. Overall, it's a good camera. I wish it was cheaper and had optical zoom.
15 Finally a stand alone product APPROACHING an end user price
This is the next generation of "webcams" - one that can be viewed AND controlled without leaving your computer on all of the time - and it includes an easy set up, audio, and wireless network connectivity.
The setup was relatively easy - the only obstacle came in assigning passwords that apparently weren't acceptable to the camera's built in webserver - and the cam does deliver a decent picture and almost decent audio.
It's great for setting up with a wireless network to allow for internet, password protected, monitoring and camera control. The motors are quiet, the features and software customizable, and the camera so far has been reliable.
