TRENDnet Wireless N Network Surveillance Camera with 1-Way Audio, TV-IP551W (White)

There have been a lot of mixed reviews on this product, and clearly some people have had problems, but I have not. I now have a total of 9 of these Trendnet TV-IP551W cameras making up my home surveillance system. They are good cameras and they work well. Picture is crisp and clear, and the included software is great - more on that later. The 802.11n wireless is very solid and reliable. There is also an Ethernet port for wired connection. As mentioned in other reviews, the "IP Cam Viewer Pro" app by Robert Chou allows you to view the cameras from anywhere using an Apple IOS or Android device. Fair warning though, you do have to know something about Firewalls and Dynamic DNS (DDNS) to make this work from anywhere over the internet (you may need your IT buddy to help you with that part - but that is not unique to Trendnet as most IP Cams work in a similar manner for most home users). I should also note that one of my nine cameras is the TV-IP551WI (the day/night version). All I can say is "Wow!". I can see everything in a large room in total darkness when the IR night vision mode is on.So why only 4 stars? The audio. Audio from the camera is all clicks and static when using this device on a wireless network. You can hear what is going on above the noise, but it is really difficult. I contacted Trendnet support about this and they were great, but admitted that the noise was interference from the camera's own built-in wireless network adapter radio (design problem). If you have the camera plugged into the wired Ethernet, the WLAN radio is disabled and there is no static at all. The microphone picks up sounds from far away, and the sound quality is great. Just not on wireless. I did get around this by purchasing a few Netgear WNCE2001 WiFi Ethernet adapters, connecting them to the wireless network, and then using a short Ethernet cable to the camera. I only did this for a few, where I had to use wireless and really cared about good audio. That did the trick. The adapter is small and does not take up much space, but does need an extra power outlet.The camera comes with included Trendnet SecurView Pro software allows you to have full DVR functionality. Very good and powerful software if you take the time to read the manual and learn how to use it. I have it running on a dedicated server with a Seagate STBV3000100 3TB USB External disk (that I got on Amazon for just over $100) to hold the recordings. So far, with 9 cameras feeding audio and video to the SecurView server, I can retain over 5 days of history using less than half the capacity of the drive. I could probably increase retention to 10 days. The software has lots of options, including motion-based detection events and is highly configurable.So in summary, it is a very good and capable camera, and is easy to setup. Yes there are others out there that may be better, but the combination of the price, video quality and the SecurView software made this the reason I kept coming back. My whole Trendnet system including cameras, USB disk drive and a couple of network adapters was just over $500 and works as well as more high-end commercial systems starting at $2000. For the money, it was a good choice for me, and I am happy with my system.

Setup:It is by no means easy to setup wirelessly. It was my first time setting up a surveillance camera and after following all of the instructions step by step I was only able to make it connect by resetting both the camera and wireless router [if you reset your router you will need to find out what your new "wifi password" key is]. To keep the camera from being disconnected when it's wireless you need to have some basic knowledge of networking, I mean being able to pull up ipconfig, assigning the camera a static IP address, etc, in order to keep it working days later after you first install and configure it.Quality:It is well built, the picture is very clear, perfect almost. This model does not have night vision, if someone can see in dim light or with a flashlight, you're not going to be able to tell who they are in the dark. Sturdy, includes 4 little soft things with glue that stick underneath so it doesn't scratch anything. Take a look at the picture in one of the provided manuals to see how to screw everything together, there is no actual instructions that instruct how to screw the camera together.My advice if you're planning on buying this:Don't even think about using the Trendnet ViewPro software unless you're a wiz when it comes to this surveillance stuff. I tried setting it up for motion-detection, ended up recording all the time, which used up all the hard drive space after less than a week. Needless to say I had to erase all the recorded footage as I needed to make more room on the hard drive. Instead I used and highly recommend a nifty little program called ispy, it's opensource [FREE] just google it. No I didn't pay for the pro version, the free version works just dandy.Final thoughts:If this is your first time setting one of these up, be prepared to spend a good 4-6 hours from start to finish, including tweaking the motion-detection if that's what you're after. Even then you will go back and probably change the range later but seriously be prepared to take 4-6 hours getting it installed and working properly on the computer.This review is coming to you from someone who does computer repair for clients in-home and on-site for 10+ years.I gave it 3 stars because I don't hate it, I'm happy with the amount I paid for it [roughly 50], but if you need to record anything that isn't WELL lit, you need to get the night-vision model, that woulda made it 4 stars, and if the program provided wasn't so user UNfriendly, that woulda made it 5 stars.I have no plans on returning it, it's been working well for a couple weeks now, just wanted to pay it forward and offer this honest review.

It's a nice piece of cam hardware. The built-in cam software lacks proper user account management and WIFI password is shown in clear text. When accessing it via web-browser (IE/Chrome) the ActiveX always caused IE to crash and when I use Java plugin instead it fails with aplug.class ClassNotFoundException. Using Trendnet's own android app for remote monitoring has severe limitations as it only works with the admin account (username/password error on all other accounts, perhaps due to audio access) and only via HTTP. Fortunately, the "IP Cam Viewer Lite" free app saved my day with HTTPS and non-admin account support.If you are non-tekky, better stay away from this one!

This is #7 in our Trendnet IP cam assortment.Works very nicely and quality is on par for Trendnet i.e. you get what you pay for. Note to prospective users/buyers: if you intend to use it with a static IP address it will take some extra effort to get it to work just as intended.

I have used this wireless colour camera as a security camera for several years now and it has worked flawlessly throughout. The image is sharp. Of course the best part is being able to call up the camera on the web and see what's going on outside (I have it pointed out to the front of the house). Setup was very east and I had it done in les than 30 minutes and I am not a computer tech.

They are excellent cameras

Sur tous les modèles le son craque, incroyable que l'on puisse vendre ce type de produit, c'est un scandale.Il semble que cela soit le cas pour absolument tous les modèles.On fait quoi? On renvoie ?