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Panasonic’s BL-C1A Network Camera

I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of remotely monitoring a house / business / dungeon over the Internet. Webcams have come a long way since the early days, and the current state of inexpensive models has impressed me quite a bit. Over the last few years I’ve owned a few different network cameras, some wireless, some with the ability to remotely pan, tilt, and zoom, but the Panasonic BL-C1A that I just picked up from Newegg is easily my favorite of the bunch. I’m not going to do a full blown review of the unit; instead I want to discuss a few ways to extend its functionality.

First, let me echo what others have said by noting that the C1A does NOT need a Windows machine to either set it up, or to view the final product. Quite the contrary — I’m perfectly happy monitoring the camera in Firefox 2.x on one of my Suse Linux boxes. It seems fairly common for IP cameras to stick to the same formula: ActiveX controls + Java video + integrated web server = rockage. But doesn’t ActiveX require Internet Explorer to run? Sure, but on this unit, ActiveX is only used to control zoom (which I don’t care about). The actual video is rendered in Java, which everyone knows is cross-platform…right? Right.

Now, before you go out and purchase a box of these cameras and expect to use your Mac or Linux box to set them up, there are a few things you need to know. First, the C1A uses a default IP of 192.168.x.253, where “x” is the same value as the network you’re running. For example, if your network uses an IP range of 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.0.255, 192.168.0.253 would be the camera’s default address. It would be nice if Panasonic mentioned this in the printed literature that came with the unit (it might actually be listed on the CD-ROM manual they packed in the box, but I wouldn’t know since I tossed that in the garbage right away).

Alright, so you know the camera’s default IP, but keep reading. Simply typing “192.168.x.253″ in your browser isn’t going to cut it. Instead, you need to access the following URL:

http://192.168.x.253?mode=local

As stated in this useful write up, the “?mode=local” is necessary to activate the camera. If you try to access the C1A without adding this line, the setup process will crap out on you. After that, it’s a simple matter of creating your login info (there is no default password needed), and then customizing network settings and so on. Pretty standard stuff.

Now, on to the fun part. One of the things I wanted from this camera was to be able to grab still shots directly from my Sprint PPC-6700’s pocket version of Internet Explorer (vomit). Well, it took a little investigating and experimenting, but I finally figured out how to do it. Assuming you’ve already finished setting up your camera and have a non-admin login set up, open up the browser on your phone and go to the following URL:

http://192.168.x.253/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=320×240&Quality=Precision

You’ll be asked to log in, so go ahead and throw in your non-admin username and password (you could use your admin info, but I’m paranoid about shooting that type of info over the public internet when I don’t need to, especially because this model doesn’t appear to support secure HTTPS). On my phone, a dialog box pops up and asks me if I want to view or save the image, so I just click view and voila! An instant 320×240 “high quality” snapshot-on-demand, which takes up a whopping 15KB. From there, just make a bookmark / favorite to the URL I gave you and from now on all you’ll have to do is access the bookmark to get your snapshot (assuming you’ve elected to save the login info, otherwise you’ll have to enter that every time you want a photo).

Okay, so 320×240 doesn’t cut it for you, or you want to play with the quality of the shot in order to cut down on file size. No problem! You can easily customize the URL to suit your needs. Here’s how the URL breaks down:

http://<CAMERA_ADDRESS>/SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=640×480&Quality=Precision

“SnapshotJPEG” tells the camera you want a still shot. If you have a phone with a browser that supports Java, you can experiment with “ImageViewer?” which should give you video instead of a still shot.

“Resolution=” tells the camera what resolution you want. Options are “640×480″, “320×240″, or “160×120″

“Quality=” tells the camera how much to compress the photo. Options are “precision”, “standard”, and “motion” — motion being the highest compression and precision being the least compressed images.

I haven’t experimented with video on my phone because the pocket version of Internet Explorer doesn’t support Java. I’m guessing that MiniMo (the pocket version of Mozilla Firefox) would support streaming video, but it eats up way too many resources for my taste. I’ll just stick with still shots for now. No doubt there are many more cool things you could do with the Panasonic BL-C1A, such as embedding one or more camera feeds into a webpage, and so on.

If you’ve purchased a C1A and found something I haven’t covered, let me know!