This good basic network camera. It is compact and has good daytime and night vision picture quality. It has a microphone and a speaker can be attached for two-way communication. It has a Micro SD-Card slot that allows it to record on its own; you can also record to your hard disk or a Network Attached Storage device. It can connect to your network by ethernet and Wifi. Apple routers do not support WPS (WiFi Protected Setup), so you need to use the manual setup instructions if you use an Airport or Time Capsule. I found it no more difficult to set up on my Apple Airport-based network than any other network camera. Once you have the camera installed, a QR Code on the back of the camera an be used to to configure the client software on your iPhone or iPad.A detailed user manual, Mac-specific instructions, and Mac client software are all available on the Lorex support site.
Where the LNC 104 fails to measure up is in software:
Mac OSX. The L-View Mac client software, which is in beta and must be downloaded from Lorex is bare-bones and obviously a work in progress. An update came out recently which at least gives it basic functionality. You can now record to your hard drive, but if your want to play back your clips, you need VLC Player, a free open-source media layer. Ironically, VLC Player includes a feature not found and any version of the Lorex software: the ability to copy and convert clips to more useful formats.
-iOS iPad. The basic functionality of the iPad version is OK. There are a couple or problems areas for me, however. The Lorex iPad software only works in landscape mode. This is a pet peeve of mine; the only time I ever voluntarily use my iPad in landscape mode is when I'm watching a long-form video like a movie or TV show. The Lorex software prevents your iPad from going to sleep; if you walk away from it while it is running (it does not even need to be connected to a camera), it will drain your battery. There are rudimentary playback controls for clips recorded on your iPad, but none for clips played from the camera's SD card. There is no way to export clips into a more useful format.
While I was writing this review, both my iPhone 4S and iPad 3 lost the ability to connect to the cam (at the same time). The desktop client, the web, and my iPad 1 all continued to work. The iPad 3 and iPhone 4S had to be re-started to regain the ability to connect to the cam.
-iOS iPhone. The iPhone app has the same functionality and issues as the iPad version except that it works in landscape or portrait mode and it needs to be connected to the cam before it overrides the system's effort to go into sleep mode and drains your battery. The iPhone version does have the ability to convert recordings made on the phone to .avi format files, but how this is done and how the resulting files can be accessed by other apps is not apparent. The user manual says only: "...you can...also convert the video files to .avi files for sharing."
-Windows. The Windows version is not without its share of irritants. If you want to play back a recording on the SD card, you click a button in the viewing window which opens a dialog box with a list of the daily folders. You open the folder for the appropriate day, scroll to the clip you want to view, then click Playback or double-click on the clip name. The dialog box closes and the clip plays. If you want to see the previous or next clip, you have to repeat the entire process. Depending on the the capacity of your SD-Card, you can have dozens or even hundreds of clips on the card. The Windows version now has the ability to record clips to your hard disk. Like the Mac version, you must download and install VLC Player in order to view any you have recorded.
-Web Interface. As you might expect, the web interface gives you the most information about the cam settings. To display video in the web interface, Internet Explorer is required because an Active-X control is used. This means you cannot view the cam image via the web page at all on a Mac or if you use Firefox or another non-MSIE browser in Windows. However, even with Internet Explorer and the Lorex Active-X control installed and enabled, all I ever got was a black frame with "Locating..." in the middle of it.
I found part of the web interface to be unnecessarily confusing and perhaps a little flaky. To me scheduling basically means creating a list of things to be done at a specific day and time. This task is available under Scheduling, but they have also lumped a bunch of behavior controls under the same heading. To me, it makes more sense to have the set-ups for alarms, notifications, and recording criteria under one heading and setting the days and times to do those things under a separate header. I understand the need for complex scheduling in security cams and I've done it on other systems, but there should also be a "Use the settings I've specified 24 hours a day, 7 days a week" check box to simplify the process when appropriate.
I was able to set up email notification and motion activation. The email notifications include a still frame as a jpeg file. However, it seems like anytime I made a change in the settings, I ended up starting from scratch. Accessing the web interface from Safari on a Mac, I was able to delete but not download clips from the SD card. Firefox on the Mac could see the clips folders, but none of their contents. Using MSIE in Windows, I was able to delete and download the files and view the downloaded files using VLC Player.
I think this is a great network cam if all you need to do is set up a camera and monitor the situation in real time. You can accomplish that in iOS, Windows, and even the Mac beta version. However, I find the process for creating, viewing, organizing, editing, and exporting clips to be cumbersome at best. If you do not know the exact date and time a clip may have been recorded, finding the pertinent clip could be very time-consuming. I also think the process for setting camera features and scheduling could be more intuitive.
Notes:
To get the software from the Lorex website, you must first go to this products web page, then you will find a tab on the bottom for downloads.
WPS setup was fast and easy. Just hit the button on your router and then on the camera.
Quality of the picture is really good. I can monitor the camera from my Android phone, Kindle Fire, and PC.
Customer service was great and replied fast to my question. I wanted to know how to record only when the motion sensor when off, not all the time. Here are the details:
*******************
For motion setup, In the manual under SD card recording/Schedule. The general steps are:
1. Enable SD card recording in Schedule mode.
2. In the Schedule menu, set the SD recording for PIR, Motion or
PIR+Motion.
3. Create an everyday schedule that covers the entire day.
*******************
Buy Lorex LNC104 LIVE Ping Wireless Network Camera Now
This camera is functional, and I eventually got it to do maybe 60% of what I bought it for. But overall the software for all the systems I tried is pretty crappy and buggy; and the features I bought it for are nonexistent and/or very well hidden.I bought this camera for monitoring my pets, who apparently bark a lot when I'm not home. So naturally, I wanted a web camera that could record when triggered by sound, and preferably alert me remotely. In fact, I found this particular model by searching for something like "pet monitoring audio trigger", which led me to the "Pet Monitoring Solutions" page on Lorex's website. Although that page doesn't list the model number, the page behind the "view details" link on the bottom clearly lists the camera as LNC104.
The "Pet Monitoring" page makes lots of appealing claims, including:
"you can set the system to record automatically whenever your pet makes a sound with the audio trigger function"
and
"The SD compatible IP camera can store up to 16GB worth of footage" (and also mentions uploading said footage to social media sites)
After fiddling with the camera and puzzling out the instructions for a few hours, I finally found an audio trigger function. However, bizarrely, it is only available on mobile devices, and only for triggering push notifications, not to start recording or send email alerts or any of the other kinds of alerts that are available for motion detection. Luckily for me, I was going to use it on my Android tablet, anyway. After another hour or so of deleting and re-adding the camera to the list (and watching it spontaneously change its own settings), I actually got the push notifications to work! on a local network. sometimes. with a delay of a few seconds. So if the dogs only bark once or twice, by the time I see the notification and "tune in", it'll be all over and I will get no information.
OK, fine so maybe I can just use the sound notification to alert me to events, and record using movement triggers, ont the 16GB of space the camera is supposed to have? Not so fast. This camera does not, in fact, have any built-in space. It does have a micro SD slot that can take up to a 32G card. So I guess now I have to find or by a microSD card. and then manually compare my sound-triggered observations with the timestamps on the motion-triggered recording. Yay.
Other annoyances:
-extremely unintuitive menu design; setting up recording schedules involves going to at least two separate menu "families", one to schedule the times in question and a separate one to say what you want to do during these times. The various trigger options are spread out in different, inconsistent menus, also depending on what it is you want to use the trigger for. "alarm" can either mean push notification or making the speakers("sold separately") attached to the camera itself make noise.
-proprietary video format (?) the software for running the cameras comes with a separate player that you need to play the videos. the format is .sdb, and a quick googling does not show it as a widely used video format. I haven't looked into it too much though. This seems to preclude the advertised "uploading to social media"
-inconsistencies between manual and software, for example: manual says that 1 is lowest and 10 is highest sensitivity; android software says the opposite. Still not sure which one is right I ended up just setting it to 5.
Conclusion:
should have just downloaded the open-source iSpy softaware and used it with my webcam.
Read Best Reviews of Lorex LNC104 LIVE Ping Wireless Network Camera Here
got on special price because it has two way voice. was rather easy to setup on wired. Took a little more effort on wireless because the MAC address on the card does not match the MAC address needed for my router where I want MAC filtering.Color fidelity is off in the green direction for whites. But with the Lorex App, you can view your home and talk to your dog from anywhere in the world.....I happen to be in China this moment and can talk to me wife and dog with no problem. the sofware works well. Better than the FOSCAM I also have.
Want Lorex LNC104 LIVE Ping Wireless Network Camera Discount?
Summary: Small device that came with few instructions and no Mac software in the box, but in the end it works well and does what it says with some minor effort.What's in the box:
The Lorex LNC104 comes with a folded, color instruction sheet that is written for PCs, a CD that has the PC software and a URL for the Mac software, ethernet cable, USB cable and a power supply brick (white w/white cable to match the device). I was not initially impressed with the PC instruction booklet, but I did find that combining it with the online instructions for the Mac at the Lorex website was sufficient for me to sort things out.
Installation:
The software is pretty crude by today's standards. You have to know to "right-click" on certain portions of the display to make settings, connect to the camera for setup, etc. Also, the look is "industrial" at best. No eye candy here it looks like it came from the Windows 2000 era at best. I mention this, because you MUST have the instructions handy or you will be very, very unlikely to figure the installation or use out yourself in any reasonable amount of time. It is strange that the interface would not include more obvious buttons, tabs or menu items to set up and operate the cameras, but it doesn't. That said, the software does work, it only crashed on me once.
You MUST have an ethernet connection initially or it is unlikely that you will be able to connect to the camera. It is apparently possible to connect wirelessly if you have a router that has a WPS broadcast button, which allows wireless password sync with the camera, but I've not seen very many of those. In fact, the only one I ever had was a proprietary T-Mobile / D-link router for the old T-Mobile "hotspot at home" feature on the their older wifi phones. Perhaps there are more, but my Apple AEB's don't have the button, so I had to wire in the camera to start with and then, using one of those "right-click" instructions mentioned before, configure the device using the Lorex web configure tool. Now, interestingly, this web configure tool seems a lot nicer than the downloaded software. Almost as if a different team wrote it one from this decade. Hate to sound so snide, but I'm just not used to having to stay slaved to printed instructions. There are no setup "wizards" here. It's all about "simon says" and if you get one wrong, it doesn't work. For instance, when I attempted to set up wireless operation, I used the printed instructions and got to the point that the web based setup tool said to pull the ethernet connection to enable wireless operation. The printed instruction didn't say to do this until I ran one test with the wired AND wireless connection in place. Turns out the hardcopy was right.
After going through all the wired, then wireless setup, I decided to download the Ping application for my iPhone 4S. It is, as to be expected by this time, not very slick looking, but it works. Setup was a lot easier than the initial setup.
Use:
Once the setup is done, the use is pretty simple. The camera is a VGA resolution device, so the pictures are far from HD. That said, daylight pics are decent. The featured low light images are pretty gunky looking, but usable so far. I did not carry out extensive testing on that part it's supposed to have an IR illuminator as well as a sensitive camera,
One issue is that although the box claims you can have conversations with another person using this device as it has a small mic and a speaker, this feature is not too useful iMHO. I have pretty great internet service and have no issue using VOIP from Skype, Ooma, GoToMeeting, etc. With the Lorex, the time lag for sound is about 2-3 seconds. This makes communication really tough. I think the best use for the sound capability is Mic only to listen for issues around the camera.
Why I removed one star:
1. No Mac instructions in the box. Although the PC instructions were helpful when used with the online Mac info, this is not a huge deal and they should have taken care of it. These are small files and small apps. It is almost as if they had a shipment deadline and were catching up on the Mac portion while the PC stuff was being manufactured and shipped. This puts the burden of consolidating documentation and software on me, the customer.
2. Time lag. A couple seconds is a long time for a potentially real-time device. This is 1.5 seconds longer than I would have thought.
3. The awkward back and forth setup between wired and wireless communication. I have to believe this could have been made easier. You usually don't have to do this with other wireless wifi devices.
4. Crude software. Like I said, it works, but it looks like a home hobby project and you must read the instructions to use it. This is below par for both Mac and PC nowadays. But, to repeat, it does work, which is why I don't mark it down more.
Trick features:
Being able to access the video stream from Mac, PC, Android and iPhone is great. Being able to do this with up to 20 (I only tested 2) devices at once is cool.
During handheld setup, you can input the device info to your phone via a QR code on the back of the camera. The implementation was rough (no surprise) but worked well enough.
Trick feature I didn't yet test:
Remote access via wif at Starbucks. If I get to this, I will update the review. Since I have cable, with DHCP addressing and a NAT in the path, I don't see how I will be able to access the device out of the home as is promised on the box, but we'll see. I suspect this can only be accomplished if i get a static address for my home (not going to happen $$$).
Conclusion:
I guess I would recommend this to a friend if they found it at the right price. IMHO, this would be under a hundred. No great shopping experience here, it just feels like it should be in that price range to represent good value. The best way I can describe this device is, it's a Bexperience. That is, it could have been an A grade play, but the software is just good enough to work, but not good enough to be happy about not by some margin. All the tested features worked and the device appears to be well made for indoor use. This includes a nice metal pivot arm instead of the expected cheap plastic hardware. If you have the patience and aptitude for a no-wizard setup experience, and the price is right, go for it.
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