Frequently Asked Questions On The Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera

Oleh: admin
December 24, 2010

If you are con­sid­er­ing get­ting the Pana­sonic BL-C131A IP cam­era, the fol­low­ing FAQ might help you make a deci­sion.  These were some of the ques­tions I had before I bought the cam­era. I’ll try to keep this as non-technical as possible.

Do I need a com­puter to run this camera?

You need a PC or a Mac to setup this cam­era ini­tially, but you don’t need a com­puter to run it. The cam­era runs a web­server within and can be con­fig­ured using a web browser.  Think of it as a tiny com­puter within your home net­work with its own IP address.

Is this cam­era wireless?

Yes and no!  This cam­era can con­nect to routers wire­lessly, but it does need a power socket.  The BL-C131A is not bat­tery operated.

Can I use this cam­era outdoors?

No.

Does the cam­era record video?

Not directly. But it can be con­fig­ured to send you email alerts or upload the images to an ftp site. (There is a way to get video clips — I’ll post a detailed howto on how to achieve this)

How about motion detection?

The BL-C131A does have motion detec­tion and can be con­fig­ured to email/ftp images only on detect­ing motion.  The sen­si­tiv­ity of motion can be adjusted.

Will the cam­era work through a glass window?

I have this cam­era setup indoors but fac­ing my car sep­a­rated by a glass win­dow.  It works quite well.  But here’s my advice from per­sonal expe­ri­ence.  Place the cam­era as close to the glass win­dow as pos­si­ble.  If there is a strong source of light on the inside, this might get reflected on the glass thus you might be get­ting the image of the reflected win­dow instead of the the view outside.
BL-C131A through a glass window

BL-C131A through a glass window

Does the cam­era have night vision?

The BL-C131A does not come with IR leds. But it does have a set­ting called the Color Night View and works sur­pris­ingly well.  This won’t work in pitch dark­ness, but even a dim street light gives good results.  Here’s the view from my house taken at night.
BL-C131A image quality at night

BL-C131A image qual­ity at night

Can I con­trol (Pan/Tilt) the cam­era from my Blackberry?

Yes.

Does this cam­era have audio?

Yes.  The BL-C131A has a micro­phone that can stream audio along with the video.  But audio works only on IE. You will not get audio via your mobile phone or Mac.  I’m not sure about Win­dows mobile, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to get audio.

I’m a Mac user.

No wor­ries! I use a Mac as well.  You don’t need a PC to even set up the cam­era.  But if you need to lis­ten in, you’ll need IE run­ning on a PC.  Audio works only on IE.

Will I be able to look at the video from work?
You can check in from any­where in the world as long as you have access to the inter­net. Pana­sonic pro­vides a free DDNS ser­vice called viewnetcam.com which makes this process a lot easier.

If you have no idea what DDNS is, don’t worry. It sim­ply means once you have the cam­era prop­erly con­fig­ured, you can choose a url to rep­re­sent your cam­era like http://mycamera.viewnetcam.com where mycam­era is assigned by you. Now, no mat­ter where you are in the world, if you have access to the inter­net, you can view and even con­trol  the video by going to http://mycamera.viewnetcam.com from a browser. Pretty cool, eh?

I would like my grand­par­ents to be able to see our baby over the inter­net, but don’t want them to con­trol the cam­era. Is this pos­si­ble? What about secu­rity, since this is on the inter­net, will any­one be able to see the images?

You can setup guest and admin­is­tra­tive users and pass­word pro­tect access.

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10 Comments

  • admin
    February 8, 2009

    Hey thanks Craig for your kind words! Being a new site, I’ll need all the sup­port I can get!

    Reply
  • Chris
    February 15, 2009

    I got this cam­era yes­ter­day. I seems quite promis­ing, but I have to say there is lit­tle tech­ni­cal info that I could find.

    How did you man­age to get this cam­era to ftp mpeg clips? It seems that only jpg images can be sent.

    I am also try­ing to fig­ure out if I can watch it over the Inter­net in my par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion: my ISP blocks out­go­ing port 80, and the admin at my work blocks incom­ing traf­fic from essen­tially every­thing else than port 80. I would love to stream out on port other that 80, get it rerouted to port 80 some­where on the Inter­net (can viewnet­cam do it?), so I can watch it at work.

    Reply
  • Philip
    August 2, 2009

    Is it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor the video from an iPhone?

    Thanks,
    Philip

    Reply
  • Andrew Byrd
    October 7, 2009

    I am try­ing to mon­i­tor the video on my Sprint Black­berry Tour — the image never dis­plays. I am using my ip name: satact.viewnetcam.com and it shows the con­trol panel but there is an X on the video. I went to options and made sure all was checked. Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Stjepan
      May 11, 2011

      I had a sim­i­lar prob­lem with my Sam­sung Android phone.
      Change the Refresh Rate from MJPEG (or H.264) to 3s.
      Regards,
      Stipe

      Reply
  • Dave
    December 18, 2009

    I see you said you would be post­ing details of how to set up an FTP for this cam­era. Have you posted this? If so where is it and if not could you help?

    Reply
  • jp
    June 8, 2011

    cam­era offline!
    i’m using iphone

    Reply
  • Michael
    July 11, 2011

    Pana­sonic cam­eras are cur­rently the most pop­u­lar IP cam­eras for home/small busi­ness use in gen­eral; not spe­cific to just this model. Pana­son­ics are pre­ferred over other net­work cam­eras due to their great multi-platform sup­port and abil­ity to net­work with each other (all Pana­sonic brand net­work cam­eras). I think Pana­son­ics, such as the Pana­sonic BL-C131A, have the best per­for­mance best under Win­dows Explorer ActiveX. The most fea­ture rich sup­port for it is under the Android mobile phone plat­form called, “IP Cam Viewer”. I couldn’t be hap­pier using this net­work cam­era under Win­dows 7 (64bit) and HTC EVO.

    Reply

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