All-Seeing Eye?
Internet cameras could be the beginning of affordable video monitoring of homes, businesses and anything else in between
By Mike Langberg

I've always wondered what my dog Kobuk does when I'm not watching, and now I know: He sleeps on the living-room carpet, much like he does when I'm looking directly into his half-closed eyes.

I made this unsurprising discovery with a very cool, if imperfect, product called the Veo Observer, a $199 Internet camera that represents the beginning of what I believe will be an important trend toward affordable video monitoring.

Internet cameras plug into a home's broadband, or high-speed, network without the need for a personal computer to be running.

The picture, and in some cases sound, can be received on computers anywhere in the world; the audio and video also can be viewed on computers attached to the home network.

Affordable Internet cameras, which I'm arbitrarily defining as models costing less than $500, have been around for about two years. Buyers are able to do some obvious things -- such as keeping an eye on their homes while at work or monitoring a store or other small business while at home -- and some surprising things, such as enjoying the scenery out the window of vacation homes while stuck in the office or checking horses in a barn on the corner of a big property.

The Veo Observer (http://www.veo.com) is the first Internet camera to sell for less than $200. Yet San Jose-based Veo, which changed its name last year from Xirlink, doesn't stint on features despite the low price.

The Observer has a high-quality CCD sensor for sharp, colorful video. There also are built-in motors for pan and tilt control, so viewers can move the camera from side to side as well as up and down by sending commands through the Net.

Three other companies offer Internet cameras for less than $500: Axis Communications (http://www.axis.com), D-Link (http://www.dlink.com) and Panasonic (http://www.panasonic.com/netcam).

Veo, which works with only Windows, and D-Link, which is Windows- and Mac-compatible, are the first with models intended specifically for consumers.

Panasonic and Axis aim more at business buyers and professional security/home -automation installers.

Internet cameras should not be confused with Web cams, those familiar, golf-ball-like gadgets that sell for much less than $100 and usually have fuzzy CMOS sensors.

Web cams only function when plugged into a computer, and many consumers don't want the hassle or expense of leaving a computer running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to enable remote monitoring.

The most visible company pushing Web cams for remote monitoring is the odious X10 (http://www.x10.com), which has plastered the online universe with offensive pop-up ads implying the only use for such products is to spy on partially clothed young women.

Internet cameras, of course, can be misused for illegal or immoral surveillance. But there are so many legitimate uses that I expect the market will grow rapidly, especially since operating these cameras costs nothing, in effect, once you've invested in a home network and bought the camera itself.

Not that Internet cameras are for everyone.

For starters, you need an "always on" high-speed Internet connection, which means either a cable modem or DSL phone line for most homes. You also need a home network, specifically a "router" or "gateway" into which the Internet camera is plugged.

Most Internet cameras make this connection with an Ethernet cable, although there are now several models using the popular Wi-Fi, or 802.11b, wireless format. Veo promises a Wi-Fi version of the Observer next month for $299.

You also need some familiarity with the lingo of computer networking. If you get sweaty palms hearing terms such as "IP address" and "static DNS," then you might want to avoid Internet cameras or find a friendly geek to tackle the installation chores.

Setting up

I think of myself as a friendly geek, so I had no trouble installing a borrowed Veo Observer on my home network, which uses an AT&T Broadband cable modem and a U.S. Robotics Model 8000 home router.

I connected the Observer, which looks like a 4-inch white plastic toadstool, into my router using a 100-foot Ethernet cable.

I then ran the cable from my home office to the living room, where Kobuk spends his day, and plugged the Observer into an AC wall outlet. This completed the hardware phase of the installation.

I then sat down at the borrowed computer I use for testing, a Gateway 500X desktop also connected to the U.S. Robotics router, and launched Internet Explorer.

I typed in the Observer's IP address, the Internet equivalent of a phone number, and got a sign-in page. After entering the Observer's default user name and password, which I could change to block prying eyes, I was immediately looking through the camera's lens.

The picture, which filled about one-fourth of the screen, looked good, and the video moved at eight to 10 frames per second -- less than the 30 frames per second of television but enough to clearly see the rare moments when Kobuk stirred himself to stretch or yawn.

Arrow buttons in the upper left of the Veo window allowed me to pan the camera from left to right or tilt it up and down.

I attached a motion detector to the Observer, a $29 option sold by Veo. The camera could now be set to grab a still image whenever something moved and send the picture to me as an e-mail attachment. I got several silly pictures of myself sticking my head into the Observer's field of vision.

Away from home

Now I was ready to try accessing the Observer away from home. This is where the problems cropped up.

The Observer, it turns out, can only be reached through Internet Explorer running on a Windows PC. Not only is it incompatible with the Macintosh, it's also incompatible with Netscape or non-PC devices such as Internet-enabled wireless phones or personal digital assistants.

Even on a Windows PC, connecting to the Observer requires downloading and installing a small piece of software.

Some computer networks block such downloads; I was stopped cold by such protection on a rent-by-the-minute computer at a local Kinko's. Nor could I connect from the computer at my newsroom desk, again because of the newspaper's strict security firewall.

My father in New Jersey, however, did succeed in reaching the Observer through his cable modem connection.

Dad was happy with the quality of the picture, even though motion dropped down to one to two frames per second through the Internet, and he enjoyed watching his 2-year-old granddaughter, Sara, ride her rocking horse.

Address shifting

I was spared another knotty technical problem called "dynamic IP." To make a long story very short, cable modem and DSL service providers sometimes change the IP address of individual subscribers, so the address you enter to reach the Observer when away from home would no longer work.

The answer is signing up for something called "Dynamic DNS," but this requires leaving a computer running at all times -- canceling out the biggest benefit of installing an Internet camera -- or getting one of the few routers that support Dynamic DNS.

Netgear (http://www.netgear.com) is one of the few companies making home routers with a Dynamic DNS feature.

The IP address assigned to my cable modem didn't change during the week I was testing the Veo Observer. But if I wanted to buy this product, I'd have to shell out $100 for a Netgear router to replace my otherwise perfectly good U.S. Robotics router.

Veo and its competitors are hard at work on various solutions to the problems of universal access and Dynamic DNS. Panasonic, for example, is promising its Internet cameras will be reachable through some wireless phones in the second half of this year.

Easier configuration and broader access, I'm convinced, will make Internet cameras a common household device. In a few years, it will no longer seem strange to keep an eye on the important places in our lives without getting up from our desks.

Copyright 2003 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service San Jose Mercury News, February 13, 2003,
Thursday, BYLINE: By Mike Langberg, ; KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE