Schlage WCW100 LiNK Wireless Network Camera

This is my 3rd attempt at Internet monitoring of my home. I started with Panasonics, then moved to Logitech's WiLife system and now I've had the Schlagelink up & running for 2 months.

I abandoned the Panasonic because it was way too finicky to keep the weblink going. Constant tinkering & calls to tech support were required (tho their tech support people are tops). Their cams were pretty good with better resolution than the Schlagelink; they also feature pan & tilt, absent on the Schlage.

The WiLife looked promising, was simple to set-up & had very good resolution with both indoor & outdoor cams; these added a minimal degree of zoom to the mix. Unfortunately, they are electrically really skittish and any kind of interference knocked them out, sometimes fatally. I had bought 8 cams before I gave up.

Now the wireless Schlagelink is a bit coarser image and is essentially fixed, but it has never gone off line and looks stupendous on the iPhone app. Interestingly, while all my other Schlagelink modules (3 door locks, 3 thermostats, 3 light controllers) rely on the wireless bridge included in the starter kit, the camera runs independently of the bridge. Even better, if your wireless goes down for a bit, it will reconnect when the wireless is up again & in a pinch it can even "borrow" a neighbor's wireless if available.

I'd like to give it 4.5 stars because of the limited resolution & lack of features, but as it fully delivers what it promises, I'm going to go all the way.

This will be a quick review. A lot of people had complaints with the resolution of this camera. What happened was Schlage was limiting the resolution and really compressing the data link through the bridge in 2009-2010 for whatever reason.

In 2011 they announced at CES they will allow high resolution down-link (its now an option) @ full 640 x 480 resolution at 30 frames. The feature is now enabled and works great. The camera's resolution has greatly improved and looks much better.

Now they need to add IR, motorized, and outdoor cameras to their line up!

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I have 3 of these but there is no practical use for them. easy setup. At times they become "disconnected" and must be powered down and brought back up (great when I'm not home I'll have to get the pets trained to do that).

When I log on I usually see an empty room or a door. Two minutes is the max you can view at a time.

If you are engaged with something unless you can run to a pc / phone and login, you will miss whatever it was that occurred (such as an attempt to guess the codes of their locks). Currently there is no way to record what it sees it cannot even take a picture and email it. The company's response when asked if they will add this "we are researching it (for over a year now)". The locks are great, cameras may be ok for observing people family members (creepy I'd suggest a web cam where they KNOW you are watching) or pets in a room (that is fully lit and a very narrow view), but do not depend on any form of recording or pictures for any event with other devices.

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This camera is a great addition to the Schlage Z-Wave system. The camera is an on-demand camera that can ge engaged from your smartphone. When I view it on my smartphone it looks fine. It is meant as a surveillance camera and not an HD camera. I agree that with technology today, the quality should be better. However, the downside of that is you will pay for that in speed and data charges on your phone. I primarly use the camera from my smartphone as I bought the Schlage system to keep an eye on my dogs and the comings and goings of the dog nanny while I am away on business trips and vacations.

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Unfortunately this is the only camera that works with the Schlage Link system. That's about the only good part of this camera. This is a low quality camera that does not allow you to record, notify on motion events, or email you an image of motion detection. These are very basic functions of other IP cameras. To make matters worse, they don't allow you to login into the camera any other way than to pay Schlage $12 / month and use their website.

The Schlage Link system works on iPhone but they haven't updated the app in over a year, and it doesn't work natively on iPads, or utilize iOS 4's backgrounding or display.

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