Reef Cam Help

As a nanny cam the only short coming is no sound. They have much more expensive models with 2 way audio. There are also zoom models that I think are not that much more. It's small so it's easy to make unobtrusive.

I noticed that when you play with the brightness controls the picture gets better.
 
Man those cameras are way over priced what is wrong with USB ones?

How much is a cordless drill vs a corded? How much is a wireless modem vs a corded. What is wrong with USB? 16ft can be a very small biz in the houses some people have.(especially some of the people that can afford large reef tanks)

I really wish I had the time to hook up my cam, which isn't near the quality of the orbit, but a better then the one your looking at I believe.

The color will show up, with that cam, as purple in black areas. Does not matter how much light you put on it, if it is black it will be purple. (a clown fish will appear to be a very dark violet and orange, not black and orange) not a huge deal, but definitely a little strange. (imagine someone asking you where you got your purple and orange clown)

Jon
 
The problem is that when the cams (any of 'em) are too close to the MH lighting, the glare causes problems with the white balancing and the perceived colors. Looking at the tank right now with the lights off, the colors look pretty good and true to me.

Now I agree, many of the wired models have better resolution, but 16' doesn't cut it. My router is at least 40' away from where I want to mount my camera. So wireless it must be....shoot the camera built into my laptop (the isight thingy built into the macs) is better...secondary problem, is a usb model needs to be hooked up to a computer physically. This does not.

FWIW, my clowns are black saddle clowns....
 
I hadn't seen your clowns was just trying to think of an example of something in a tank that is black that could appear purple. The lighting, white balance problem could be helped a good deal if the only thing seen by the camera was inside the tank. If none of the rest of the room, tank frame or stand are seen then the lighting will change to better show the colors in the tank. But with such a large tank and a rotating cam, such as moonpod's, there is not an easy way to do this.

Now a third option might be a network cam that is wired. It would plug into your router and you would run a cord from that. The limit with network cables is well over 100 feet. I am not sure the price or the quality of the picture.

moonpod is there a way in your camera preferences, hardware wise inside settings/control panel, to set the lighting so it stays constant where you would like it and does not adjust?
 
I have a D-link that allows guests. My tank is only a 75 but I would post the link if anyone's interested. It has pan/scan capabilities but are not enabled for guests.
 
Again, I'm not running CAT 5 cable all over the place. It's a pain drilling the holes in the floor and crawling around the crawl space.

Maybe I can set those, but I haven't spent that much time playing with it.

This works for what I needed, which was to be able to take a quick look in on the system to see that all is well while I am away. o2manyfish.com has one of these crazy canon webcams that has much better resolution and zoom capapbilities, but is of course WAY more expensive.
 
Yeah, that's what I'm wanting to do too. I'm not wanting to look at a tiny piece of coralline on the side of the tank and see that it is perfectly pink. I'm wanting to see that my fish are still swimming, the water is still moving, the corals are still standing up, and my lights are on.
 
I've never tried this before so I hope it works.

The cam's address is 24.15.155.194

username: guest
password: reefcentral

Please don't yell at me for the tang. 180 is on the way.

Please let me know if you can view OK.
 
WOW! That looks great. That's a little more expensive of a camera than what I was looking for. But the colors look really true.
 
It's up and running.

Here's the info.

Go to http://www.reefmotion.com
user: reefcentral
password: reefcam

Depending on how you have Internet Explorer st up you might have to lower the security level on your Internet Explorer browser and install an activeX control which is fine. If Windows won't let you install the activeX control go to the tools menu and then click tools --> internet options --> advanced and check the circle box in that list under Security which reads "Allow the installation of active x controls that have invalid signatures".

Here's the lighting schedule:
VHO actinic on at about 11:00 AM
t5' actinics on about noon
halides on about 12:30 PM
halides off about 8:00 PM
t5's off about 9:00 PM
VHO actinics off about 10:00 PM

Enjoy the show!
 
Moonpod,

Did you go with a Panasonic router as well? If you didn't what type of router incl. model # are you running?

thanks
 
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