| | |  | Security Cameras | Home » » » Foscam FI8918W Wireless/Wired Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with 8 Meter Night Vision and 3.6mm Lens (67° Viewing Angle) | | | | | | | Description: | | The Foscam FI8918W Wireless IP Camera features high quality video and audio, pan/tilt, remote Internet viewing, motion detection, night vision as well as a built-in network video recording system. In addition, it is smartphone compatible (iPhone android & Blackberry) as well as viewable over the Internet network using the standard Safari browser (no app necessary). The camera functions well as an IPhone baby monitor or as part of a home or office security system with remote Internet monitoring ability. | | | Features: | |
• The IR lights can be turned off manually from the software
• Audio quality is improved, there will be no noise when speaking into the camera
• WPA2 Encryption Supported
• Added an audio input jack which can be used with an external microphone
• Relocated the network light to the back of the camera. Add a power indicator lamp
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.87 inches | | Product Width:
| 4.88 inches | | Product Height:
| 7.44 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.5 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.0 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 4.6 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.4 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 604 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 604 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
406 of 425 found the following review helpful:
 Easy to setup, a clear picture (even in the dark), remote viewing and low cost makes this camera an excellent choice.Oct 19, 2010
By Jackie
Summary: Overall this camera does everything well, and for the price, nothing comes close.
Setup was quick and painless. I plugged the camera into my router with the included cable and after checking my router settings for the IP address, I could access the camera straight from a browser. On the settings page I only modified the username/password, adjusted the pan/tilt speed and added my wireless settings. There are a lot of other options, but these are the basics to get up and running and allow placement of the camera anywhere within range of your wireless router with only the power adapter.
The picture is clear and works in all light conditions from total darkness to daylight. The IR is very useful in both of my toddlers rooms at night. The wide angle allows me to see a lot and with the pan/tilt I can see everything.
We have iPhones and we use an app called "Foscam Surveillance". It works well with these cameras (including the pan/tilt function) and is only $5. We can also access these cameras from outside our home over the internet either from a browser on say my computer at work or using the app on my iPhone. My husband set that up, send me a message and I will see if I can have him post some instructions on how to do that. It's great for checking on the kids when they are with the sitter or knowing that our home is safe when we are gone on the weekends. The peace of mind has been priceless for us.
My husband and I already had a few of the previous model, the Foscam FI8908W. Although not a giant leap, there are some definite improvements that make this a worthwhile upgrade. Some improvements are:
1.) Increased pan/tilt range and speed settings (fast is nice when following a running child!)
2.) Slightly improved look and smaller size
3.) Replaced the activity light on the front of the camera with an additional IR LED
4.) The onboard speaker and microphone have much clearer sound than the old model and are accompanied by additional audio input and output jacks on the back to allow an external speaker and/or microphone.
5.) Ability to turn off the IR LEDs from the web interface
Conclusion: My husband and I have found this IP camera is easy to setup and works well to remotely view areas around our home. Believe me when I say we did a lot of research, and for the price, nothing comes close to this IP camera.
137 of 142 found the following review helpful:
You don't have to be an tech-but....Nov 16, 2010
By Katherine
If you have never interfaced with your router's software before (and you are not brave!) than this might not be for you. It is not hard to set up. You plug in its AC adapter and plug it into your router. Follow the instructions and wow.
The picture is wonderful. The motion alarm is fantastic. We placed on of these inside our barn across the street from our home, about 350 feet away. We added an $80. antenna to our router from Hawking, also available on Amazon, and poof! I can now see what all the sqwak is at 2AM in my barn with out walking all the way out there! Wow, wow, wow. The pan and tilt features are really nice. We setup another at our front door, and three "out door" styles around the outside of the property. I don't know how long this black "indoor" will last in the extreme temps and humitity of our barn and front porch, but that is not Foscam's problem. I will update at the end of the winter, or sooner if they die during winter!
4/3/11 Well they made it through the winter. We have been able to review motion detection alarm triggered video clips that were saved on our pc. We have been able to remote pan across the barn to see who is making all the racket and why. It is lovely to know who has been on your porch while you were sleeping! The cameras are wonderful. the there is an antenna you can get on amazon that will extend you wireless cababilities. We view the inside and outside of our barn across the street. These are great.
54 of 54 found the following review helpful:
Unbelievable performance for the priceMar 01, 2011
By John Colby
There are a ton of well-written reviews for this camera (also check out the other versions, e.g. FI8918W White, FI8905W) that give an excellent sense of its many strengths, minor weaknesses, as well as tips for setting up IP cameras in general. I won't rehash the basics, but I will give a brief overview of my setup. Then I'll make a comment on security, and finally go through some of the ways you can extend this camera's capabilities. This last section is where the Foscam truly shines, in my opinion. After all, if I just wanted a no-hassle cam/DVR, I could get something more basic (but much more expensive) off the shelf at Costco or through a residential security company.
If you have any questions, just comment on this review. I'm happy to respond.
Setup:
The setup process was very standard for any sort of web-enabled device. It'll take a bit longer if you've never gone through the steps before, but once you do it, you'll know how to set up a whole slew of similar devices (e.g. home webserver, media servers, etc.). There are literally hundreds of great tutorials on all of these topics around the web, so if any step or terminology is confusing, just google it and you'll find a bunch of good links. (i.e. don't get deterred by reviews that say "bad instruction manual" or "bad customer service", since you won't need either if you have the whole internet and the power of google at your fingertips). Anyway, here is the rough outline of the setup process for me:
1. Connected Foscam via LAN cable, checked "DHCP clients" list on router (I have a MacBook Pro and an Airport Extreme router) to get local Foscam IP, and then typed this into my web browser to get to the Foscam web interface. Alternatively, use the little utility included with the Foscam to get to the same place.
2. Added a new login/password, deleted admin login, and set up wifi access in the Foscam settings. Then disconnected from LAN and moved Foscam to the desired location. Plug it back in and now it's working via wireless.
3. Went into my router's settings and assigned a static IP to the Foscam's wifi MAC address (note: this MAC is different from the ethernet MAC). This is done with "DHCP Reservations" on the Airport, but of course the exact label will vary by router. Now the Foscam web interface will always be accessible at the same local address within my home network.
4. To get external access outside of my home network, I went into my router's "Port Forwarding" settings and forwarded some external port to port 80 at the static local IP of the Foscam.
5. Since I have a residential internet provider, my external IP is dynamic, which means it could potentially change. To get around this, signup for a free dyndns account. Then just use the updater client on the Foscam, itself, or one of many others that are available for free for mac, windows, and linux.
Security:
This is a bit confusing since the Foscam advertises "encryption". The part that IS secure is the Foscam's communication to/from your router via wifi. This is very good, and considering how easy it is to snoop traffic over an unprotected or WEP-protected wifi (there are even NYTimes articles describing the basics!), I would consider this a mandatory feature of any IP cam. While this is excellent to have, if you choose to make your Foscam web interface accessible from the outside internet (i.e. you did port forwarding), then this connection is public and completely unencrypted. Firstly, this means you should immediately add a new user in the Foscam settings and then delete the admin login. Even once this step is done, it means that there will be no little "lock" symbol in your browser indicating SSL encryption, and your new login/password and video stream will still be sent in the clear. This doesn't bother everyone, but if it does, you can use a computer on your home network to set up a VPN or SSH tunnel (easier) to make the connection encrypted (or just disable external access completely if you don't need this feature). At any rate, it's good to be aware of this limitation at least.
Enhancing functionality:
- Misc information on advanced features - There is a lot of useful information about these Foscams, including some more advanced topics, scattered around on various blogs and forums. Here are a couple (I'm sure google will find even more): gadgetvictims dot com, forum dot networkwebcams dot com, networkcamerareviews dot com.
- mangocam dot com - Free online storage for your cam stream. What's the point of having a security camera if the crooks steal all your computers with the footage!? This site just popped up with a free public beta, so it's definitely worth checking out. Sort of like the built-in FTP/email features taken to a whole new level.
- Smartphone apps - A neat way to check in on your cams remotely (but see important security note, above). IP Cam Viewer Lite works great for Android, and other reviews mention other apps for iPhone, etc.
- ZoneMinder - The holy grail for getting the most out of your cam. This is a free and open-source web application for managing your cam feeds. It is sort of like mangocam, but you install it yourself on your own webserver, and it does a whole lot more. For instance, you can define different motion detection "zones" in the image. Maybe zone #1 is the whole image, zone #2 is just a doorway, and zone #3 is a tree that is always moving in the wind. Then you can define all sorts of complex filters, like 1) Record a section of video footage when there is any motion in zone #1, excluding zone #3, or 2) Record a section of video footage when there is any motion in zone #2, but only during work hours on weekdays; then automatically send some still screenshots to my email and upload a movie of the event to some off-site server. Wow...the options are truly endless! With just this program, some $200 linux boxes, and some Foscams, you could start a business setting up surveillance systems for people!
189 of 205 found the following review helpful:
 Active X Controls crash and freeze Window 7Dec 18, 2010
By Andy
"Computer Enthusiast"
I really wanted to love this camera, the feature set appeared to be excellent. The set up was fairly simple to set up a static IP address and I even gave it a higher port number. It did work well in Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but the most advanced features like sound and better quality picture appear to be in Internet Explorer. I even got it to work via my iPhone. The problem I have is the constant freezing upon logging via Internet Explorer on my Windows 7 Laptops. I'm running both 32 bit and 64 bit IE. I looked for solutions and saw users have been experiencing IE issues with the buggy Active X controls since Vista.
I'm on the fence if I should keep this Wireless IP Cam, since the Activex code crashes on both my laptops and freezes them. I'm sick of having to reboot. It's very annoying, but I'm not sure if I really need the audio anyway, I'm more interested in photos and ability to ftp, and email pictures to an account. It's annoying since I even upgraded the firmware to the most current version and tried to follow all the useless instructions of disabling firewalls, disabling antivirus, and allowing all active x controls even whitelisted the IP in a trusted zone. NOTHING WORKED. So far the Active x controls are the only thing broken, besides two IR lamps seem to dim compared to the rest, the ability to pan and tilt are excellent. Image Quality is fair, seems almost better in the dark, but in the dark it's black and white.
Update:
I decided to keep the Camera. I've noticed it seems to go into a "look" mode randomly moving everywhere occasionally, but overall I'm happy with the product. I signed up for the free dynamic dns account, then put the info in my Verizon Fios Router and Foscam settings. I also used my ISP and set up an FTP Account. I also enabled UPnP, which allowed me to set up the port forwarding rules in my Verizon Router. I'm using a higher 4 digit port number ending in zero so I can add additional cams in the future. Other then the remote control with Internet Explorer, I was able to get all the other features to work, including motion detection, emailing via the SMTP settings (used my ISP again), and FTP of any activity out to my account (my hosting ISP is Bluehost - which allowed me to configure the FTP and SMTP info very easily).
Let me know if you require any assistance configuring settings, it's convenient to access via Dynamic DNS Address or directly via the IP Address (must add high port to each to connect). The 5 dollar iPhone app is also a nice access option.
If they resolve the Win 7 Active X issues or allow sound via other browsers, I'll raise my review. Also we'll see how the quality holds up over time.
71 of 74 found the following review helpful:
 Great Camera, busted my neighbors dog!Dec 29, 2010
By Larry
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R26XM30EGQ5KWP Was looking for a wireless camera to use to try to figure out what dog was making a mess on our front lawn. Bought this Foscam based on the Amazon reviews, and was not disappointed. Positioned it on the inside window sill in our living room, and before 4pm the same day, caught my neighbors dog (dogs) doing their business on our yard. This is exactly the proof I was looking for. The camera worked like a champ!
It took me about an hour or so to figure out the wireless settings and the alarm mode (motion detection). If you are running windows 7, you need to read the manual about how to add the IP address to your Internet Explorer trusted sites. Once I did that, I could set the folder where the video's are sent direct to my PC.
Picture quality is just fine. Although, the IR mode does not work when viewing through a window pane as I am. The lights just reflect off the glass. Otherwise (daytime) the quality is very good as you can see in my sample video.
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