This is how I ended up with the World's Cheapest Android Tablet. It is a bottom of the line wireless security camera. SriCCTV provides the OEM support for the cheap Power Tilt and Zoom wireless Intranet Protocol Camera (PTZ IPCam) I bought on Ebay. SriCams are basically generic knock offs of a variety of more well known models. Since most of the "well known" models are manufactured in China, the main components in the SriCams are likely from the same vendors. So while there may be some quality differences the biggest difference appears to be the documentation and support.
The documentation for the Sricam model I bought is surprisingly complete. Surprising complete isn't complete complete so there are a few functions you have to dig a bit to figure out. As long as you have a Windows or a Mac machine and a router for the initial set up, you can get all the main features working pretty painlessly. Since the camera uses ActiveX in the windows version, you do have the ActiveX related security issues. It is always good advice to have your computer backed up with a restore point just in case something happens. As far as backup goes, a cheap 32 Giga byte USB flash drive is a great time saver and you can even dedicate a portion of its memory to improve the performance of your machine.
This backup and restore advice doesn't really have anything to do with the Sricam as much as with addons you might be tempted to download. Most of the free applications sites have adware and often malware links on the site as advertisement and sometimes embedded in the application With SriCam, if you stick to the provided software, you should not have any issues. Never hurts to be safe though.
One thing you will notice once you have the camera running is that security video eats up a lot of CPU time. Unless you have a killer computer, sticking to the lower resolution and basic features is recommended. Freeing up my CPU was the main reason I bought the $35 World's Cheapest Android Tablet. The camera comes with an APCAMERA app or you can download that app from the usual suspects. The only real problem with the APCAMERA app is that you cannot access some of the file designation pages in the device configuration firmware. One of the few warnings in the Sricam documentation is that their cameras probably will not like firmware upgrades. Trying to keep Windows out of the process turns out to be a major PITA because of the firmware so your default file locations will end up being on your Windows or Mac Machine. You are allowed to play with Email and FTP file transfers along with pretty much everything else from a tablet except the basic file storage.
I have jumped ahead because Email and FTP are related to most of the negative comments on the SriCam. This seems to have nothing to do with the camera but is related to the Email and FTP providers. I used Google mail for the camera and Google determined the camera was a spammer. To fix that I had to get into my Google account and acknowledge that the camera was mine etc. I didn't think that was very unusual, but to some it must have been a major PITA.
FTP is another story. I wasn't that familiar with setting up my own FTP server and didn't want to pay $5 to $10 a month for a FTP service so I surfed for information and downloaded a number of "free" fixes prompting the backup and restore warning at the beginning of this post. One solution I found was HTTPS/FTPS/SFTP app for Android. This free app does include adware but the adware is pretty benign and comical. You can get a pro version for a fair price if you like it but the free version is what you want initially to check out. The app allows you to turn you Android or iPhone into a local server.
At the time I was only looking for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) so I could stream or send packets of video to something other than my PC. The WCT fits the bill of something other and at $35 was cheaper than DVR already set up for security cameras. With FTP I can store the sricam video (as a stream of jpeg images) on the WCT and transfer to my PC or anywhere else during idle times. As jpeg images I have an adjustable time lapse so I can reduce the number to save CPU or memory assets. I can record a real streaming video, but that has to be routed through my PC using the available software or I have to manually enter the code for the WCT. That is more of a SriCam defect than WCT defect which appears to be due to the OEM choice of activeX.
While anonymous is an option in HTTPS/FTPS/SFTP for the sricam I found that secured, i.e. you use a password, works best with the camera. This simple user&password handshaking makes the camera and the app happy plus you have some basic security. Since the APCAMERA app allows you to set up email and FTP, follow the instructions for both apps and you shouldn't have any major issues.
There are a few mildly irritating things you will have to deal with. The APCAMERA app has a PTZ sweep function so you finger on the tablet will send the camera off to different directions. The left/right sweep is also reversed. Another PITA is that depending on your wireless router, the camera IP address with be dynamic not fixed. So if you completely lose communication with the camera just scan to see if it changed addresses. If needed you can allow a few of the most likely IP addresses for the camera so you don't have to manually scan after a power failure or reboot. For some reason I wasn't able to fix the IP address for the camera. Allowing for a range of addresses seems to have worked around that issue. I did give fixing the IP address another shot in my router that so far is holding. So if you can fix the IP fine, if not there are options.
So far I only have the one camera and am trying to make some tweaks to get acceptable performance in terms of video quality and CPU/memory usage. With the available motion detection set up, you tend to either get lots of false alarms or miss the action. If you have enough memory, the lots of false alarms aren't all that bad. The World's Cheapest Android Tablet though only has a few gigabytes built in so you may need to add a USB flash drive or tf memory card if you want to keep everything in one place or you can upload to your computer or cloud storage. Since the camera video can burn through gigabytes of bandwidth per day even in the 320X resolution, I am thinking a 64 GB tf card should provide a week's worth of storage and allow some extra video processing opportunities. A 64GB brand X tf card on Ebay is only about $8 and can be used in my video/digital camera, but addons to the World's Cheapest Android Table can start adding up over time. So far for a basic security system I have a total of $75 invested. If that was my only goal, I could have bought a stand alone 4 channel security system for a low as $100 up to the sky is the limit.
With that thought, you don't need a PTZ camera for basic security. Any old phone or computer camera will do and there are apps you can get for motion detect, facial recognition etc. The PTZ camera at $35 is just kinda fun. So if I were doing a plain Jane game camera, the WCT with a solar battery back-up would do the same thing for less than $50 plus whatever housing you want to conceal/weather proof your project. If you want cellular phone capabilities you are better off buying a used smartphone and no contract service. With the WCT you can add a wireless 3G cellular dongle, but it doesn't have that capacity built in, and really doesn't look like it is worth the effort. I may consider one in the future just for grins, but just about any smartphone can be set up as a wireless hot spot.
Just for a quick and dirty security system that is kind of fun to play with, it isn't bad. If I want to make it more professional though, I will need to make some modifications. As it is, I get a neat little click sound when there is motion detected and not too many false alarms with the motion detector sensitivity set to mid range. There are plenty of more fancy motion detector apps which have their own CPU and memory demands. One that I tried was iSpy on the PC. That slowed the old PC down so much I was inspired to get the WCT. If you have a newer PC it probably is a better way to go just to play around. If you are serious about a "real" security system, I would go for one with a dedicated DVR. The SriCam/WCT combo is fine for checking the mail and messing with the pets/kids.
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