Foscam Infared HD Hidden Camera and DVR

These cameras are fantastic, especially for the price. I purchased two of these for surveillance in my apartment, for numerous personal reasons which I won't get into. It's sufficient to say that the cost of the cameras is a very small price to pay for peace of mind. The design of the cameras works very well for covert recording. Their small size and inconspicuous appearance allows you to hide them in plain sight or easily stash them someplace where they won't be noticeable. Setup is incredibly easy. The first time I used them, I was in a bit of a hurry (on my way out the door for work), and I pulled them out of the box, popped the sd cards into their slots, plugged them in (using included power cables - I haven't tried running them on the batteries because I haven't wanted to mess with figuring out how long they'll last, how long they need to charge, etc.), turned them on, flipped the switches to what I assumed (correctly) was motion activation, stashed them in inconspicuous places, and left. And ya know what? They worked perfectly. It was that easy. The disk that is included has a quick-start guide, some video tutorials (which I've yet to watch), and a software widget, which is not needed unless you're either setting the time/date or trying to make a custom setting (or apparently formatting your sd card, if necessary). The custom settings include various options for use in your car, as well as voice activation. Nice options, but I'm sticking with the default motion-activation setting on mine. Their recording quality is perhaps not spectacular (if you're trying to film a movie, you probably want to invest a bit more money to get a camera that's intended for that use), but certainly is good enough for surveillance purposes. A few notes about the recording: 1 - Though really unimportant, if the camera is placed sideways, the recording will not automatically correct itself, as it might with a recording on your phone. So if you record sideways, you watch it sideways, unless your media player (or device) of choice will let you rotate it. 2 - These cameras record in night vision. Although that may be an extremely useful feature to have, for my purposes, it's unnecessary. I leave lights on in my apartment when I'm not home (I know, shame on me), so the night vision option does nothing more than distort the colors in drastic and unpredictable ways. Items that are black, for example, may appear black, dark gray, light gray, brown or even white in the recording. Something that's bright Iron Man red may look light gray. Now, for personal use and just reviewing the recording on your own, this isn't a big deal. It could be a potentially major problem, though, should your recording happen to capture an unknown person marching into your apartment. "Yes, officer, here's the recording...but the person's hair color, clothing color, and maybe even his skin color are sort of a mystery." The settings do offer "day," "night" and a few other ways to tweak the lighting options, but I've found that no matter which setting I use, the colors in the recordings do not get any truer-to-life. They're just way off. 3 - This can be changed when you install the software, but I found that, straight out of the box, both of my cameras were showing a time and date that was about 18 hours off. One of my cameras, for some completely unknown reason, suddenly decided that the year was 2065. It's simple to reset it when you connect it to your computer, but after seeing it do that, I have to wonder if it will change itself again. 4 - I've only used my cameras set on motion activation, and they work extremely well. However, I've seen my kitties teleport from one room to another. In one file, a kitty can be seen walking into the bedroom and not coming out, while in the next file, he appears in the living room. Either my kitties have some unique abilities, or the cameras' motion detection isn't sensitive enough to kick on at their walking from one room to another. Assuming it's the latter, granted, kitties are small. I would assume that this wouldn't happen if a person walked through the room. There are options to change the motion sensitivity, which presumably would resolve this oddity. But then, I'm not too worried about my kitties' every move. For playback, it creates .avi files, separate files for each time the camera kicks on. I've connected the cameras to my laptop and viewed them directly from the camera, using WMP and VLC players, and they play beautifully. I've also popped the sd cards out of the cameras and put them into my phone to view the recordings, and that works just as well. Out of curiosity, I tried hooking them up to my BluRay player and to my tv, but neither seemed to want to play the files (though I use them to play .avi's all the time). Not a big deal - I just tried it because I was curious if it would work. Customer service from Foscam appears to be outstanding, even if they are persistent. Immediately after my purchase, I started getting emails from them, firstly offering to help me in any way they can, and answer any questions I may have. That, to me, seems unusual these days, and rather nice. I've continued to get emails from them, asking me to review the product. Fair enough. I do really like these cameras, and I've intended to let the world know, but I wanted to explore the options in the software before doing so, and I hadn't gotten around to it until now. Overall, like I said, I think these cameras are fantastic, especially for the price. The only negative thing about them, in my opinion, is the night vision and its crazy color distortion. Perhaps I'll take Foscam up on their offer for assistance and find out if there is a way to change that.