[CES 2014] Samsung Techwin is tackling a problem that many WiFi Camera enthusiasts (including myself) have bumped onto: setting up outdoors cameras is not as simple as it seems, especially if you want a system that is Internet-connected and easy to setup. There are some things that you can’t really escape: first, you need to drill some holes in the outdoor walls to attach the camera (there is rarely a flat surface handy and you need to think of wind conditions etc…) and to accommodate some kind of power cable.Even if you do that, it’s not a done deal. External power source usually require an outlet, and there is almost never one handy when you want to attach the camera at the corner of a building for example. To solve this problem, the SmartCam HD Outdoor Camera is using Power over Ethernet and a WiFi Module that stays inside the home. The setup is like this: Home Network > WiFi > WiFi Module > Ethernet > Camera.
Since the power is provided by the Ethernet cable, you can use quite long cable to power and connect the camera (I’m not sure what the length limit is, but it’s probably much longer than whatever cable would come with an external power supply).
While the overall setup may be bigger than regular outdoor WiFi cameras, the design has several advantages: the outdoor camera is much smaller, the reception is better and the design does not have antennas sticking out. The SmartCam HD Outdoor shares most of its specifications with the indoor SmartCam HD, so I recommend reading about that one too.
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