Solwise SEC-C1002-IR review

Most budget IP cameras are housed in flimsy plastic cases, which is fine if you want to keep an eye on the cats while you're at work, but no good for outdoor use.

Solwise's SEC-C1002-IR camera is ready for outdoor use, and costs less than £100, although you'll also need to spend £12 on a wall bracket to mount it on. An 802.11b/g wireless version, the SEC-C1002W-IR, costs £40 more.

The C1002 has the same firmware and networking features as Solwise's excellent indoor SEC-C1062W wireless pan-and-tilt camera. You can view the camera's live feed via most browsers and manually record live video to a PC on your network in MJPEG format. You can also view footage from up to three more IP cameras using the same interface.

Although the web interface doesn't look very polished, it's well documented and easy to use. The camera supports DDNS, so you can assign its web interface to a standard URL for remote access, even if your ISP doesn't provide you with a static IP address.

The camera isn't capable of saving video to an FTP server or emailing clips to you. This isn't unusual for a budget security camera, though, and stills are usually enough to see what's going on when the motion sensor is triggered. You can schedule when motion detection is active and how often snapshots will be sent to an FTP server when it's triggered, with intervals of as little as one second. It can also send an email alert to up to four recipients when triggered. You can hook up extra passive infrared sensors to junction blocks on the camera, so it can be triggered before the moving object comes into its field of vision.

The camera streams video at a maximum resolution of 640x480 and a frame rate of 15fps. The sharp images it saves via FTP have the same maximum resolution and appear identical to stills from the MJEPG video stream.Video quality is a bit fuzzy under normal lighting levels, and colours aren't entirely accurate in its Outdoor mode. Once you turn off the lights, the C1002 automatically switches to infrared mode, where it really comes into its own.

We were impressed by the clarity of the black-and-white night vision footage and the 10m IR range. It wasn't blinded by light sources in the frame. Objects illuminated by other lights show up in full colour, while dark areas are still clearly visible in black and white. It is possible to blind the camera, but only by putting a solid object so close to its lens that the IR light bounces back at it, resulting in a whiteout.

Y-Cam's wireless Black SD has better recording options, including recording to FTP or an SD card. However, the SEC-C1002-IR is cheaper and comes ready for the outdoor life. Although its features are limited, this is a great security camera for taking stills, with sturdy build quality and sharp night vision.