Sricam AP004 IP Camera

I wanted an HD, wifi PTZ outdoor cam and this one looked pretty good and was one of the cheaper ones. It is built very sturdy with a metal frame. It worked well for about 36 hours. I was able to easily detect the IP address using an IP scanner, change the port to 80, input my wifi pass, change the camera pass and get it up and running in my living room via wifi with full PTZ functionality in 720p. I was also able to get it to work on iSpy and record video when movement is detected and have it follow any moving objects then return home. This was all working for the first 36 hours. After that, the camera began to cut off. Since it was mounted 20+ feet above my garage, it wasn't exactly convenient to try and diagnose what the problem was. At first, I thought it was a wifi issue so I unmounted it and brought it back inside to connect to the router via ethernet. I put it back outside and about 12 hours later, it stopped responding again. This time, I went over to the breaker box and shut off the power for about 10 seconds and then turned it back on. The camera rebooted and reconnected to wifi. It worked fine for about 10 minutes then once it started to pan and tilt too far, it cut off again. I turned off the breaker, turned it back on, cam rebooted and then it died doing the same exact thing - panning and tilting more than 180 degrees from the center seems to be the trigger that kills it. I tried resetting to factory settings, playing around with the internal PTZ settings in the camera as well as the settings in iSpy and it actually eventually made it worse. Now, the camera decided to not pan and tilt properly. Whenever it finished tracking something, it would just turn all the way around and face the wall of my garage when it was supposed to go back to the preset center position. Oh, and it would also disconnect from wifi and have to be hard reset every time it landed in that position. I spent the majority of my free time of 2 days trying to just get the camera to stay on let alone function as described. If I could, I would give this a negative star rating and ask them to PAY ME EXTRA on top of the refund price because of the time spent messing around with it. To anyone who thinks that they are saving 80-100 bucks by buying this camera vs something from Foscam, should seriously consider paying more for a better brand name camera even if it has a lower resolution. Speaking of the resolution, it does let you choose between 320x240, 640x480 and 1280x720 but the "720p" is just a stretched version of 648x480 and very grainy especially at night with the IR lights on. I'd rather spend $175 on a Foscam 0.3 MP outdoor PTZ camera than one of these. The picture quality will probably be the same or better and the camera will actually work. I would even get an indoor camera like the $60 Foscam FI9821P V2 (720p, pan & tilt) and buy a $30 waterproof case for it before buying another Sricam. In fact, I am going to take the $120 refund from this and buy two of those FI9821P V2's right now. It is better supported, there are several video reviews about that exact model - in English - and all of them are positive. And based on what I have seen, it is actually real 720p not a stretched 480p. Plus, the customer support is better and they actually release tirmware updates for their products. One of the things I tried with this Sricam was looking for a FW update. The Sricam website is horrendous and useless. A forum post I found about the Sricam AP series linked to their Italian site which actually had a page for FW updates but the links did nothing. They weren't even links, just text.Bottom line, TL;DR version, don't even think about buying anything from this company.

Price: Great.Construction: Very good.PTZ/Focus: SlowPresets: Okay but if WIFI is lost camera defaults to looking almost straight down.Range: Good (mine is 40' away from router).Night Vision: Good.Picture Quality: Good.Remote Viewing: Camera has preset DDNS sites and NO-IP is not one of them so you are forced to use the server in China (free of charge).Overall: Good camera for the price.

ok for the price. night vision not great. nasty glare when you bring it to level. no degree of zoom, it's all or nothing. was easy to setup. understand this ships from china so don't be in a rush to receive.I would not buy another one of this model. zoom is more like 3x than 5x

I purchased the Sricam AP004 IP camera a few years ago and finally got around to installing it. The performance is very disappointing. Auto Focus doesn't work. Even when I try and focus by the software it will go out of focus when I get it close to the best focus, very frustrating. The zoom control worked at first, but after a day it goes to the extremes: either completely zoomed in or completely zoomed out. I installed the camera under a shallow eve on my shed, so not directly exposed to the elements; however, after the first light rain there is water on the inside of the lens. At best this is just a visual deterrence having wrongdoers think there is a camera. In the past couple of years I have stuck with Foscam or Amcrest. I would recommend that you look at one of those brands.

I really thought I could give this camera a fair shot and that it couldn't be THAT bad. OK. I learned better. It's getting sent back.I believe this camera is probably a standard physical camera that is bought by multiple companies who breath life into it via their software (SW) and firmware (FW). The physical camera itself is pretty good. I'd give it a four star. The SW and FW? Hey - I have 20+ years developing aerospace FW. This just reeks of inexperience.Auto focus either is lousy or doesn't work.Presets didn't work at all.Picture is OK for a 720P, but nothing about which to write home.Disappeared multiple times and had to be power cycled to get it back.I won't fault the poor English in the documentation, but it is a good thing I know how to set these types of cameras up.I really wish I was saying this camera was good to great, but - alas - shan't happen for this one.

Picture is not bad but not great either. Works well with Ispy. I give it a 5 for the price + function but if you want sharp crisp recognizable images you'll need to at least start at $300 and higher for a PTZ camera. I'm looking for a better picture now for under that amount and failing that I'm coming back for 3 more of these for the other corners of my house.

Wi-Fi failed after 3 days. Had to return it. The image and zoom was good. Documentation very poor. Software will not run on Win 8, must use compatabilty mode for XP or Vista. Even in compat mode, software had a lot of errors and could not access all the features.

Camera has to be reset (unplugged) once a week at first. It now needs to be reset every day, sometimes twice a day. Everything else works fine. Now looking for a replacement.