What our experts say…
Now here’s something you don’t see every day – a network camera manufacturer brave enough to include a Quick Setup Guide with just a handful of illustrations and a few words on two sides of a sheet of paper.
Traditionally network camera instruction manuals – and there’s usually more than one of them – are weighty tomes that require a degree in astrophysics to understand; so is the Nettuno MegaPX really that simple to set up?
Possibly… though we did have an early set-to with network addresses on our very simple office network, but it was nothing serious and easily resolved. It also helps that the MegaPX has a relatively brief feature list but the point is, in theory, for most installations things should proceed smoothly. In case they don’t there’s the very helpful Nettuno helpline, who quickly sorted out our little problem, but we’ll come back to that later.
One of the two CD-ROMs supplied with our sample contained a fair amount of reading matter in the form of pdf files, and whilst very interesting, they didn’t appear to be especially relevant to our particular box of tricks and mostly concerned the utility software on the disk.
The MegaPX is one of a family of IP cameras from the Italian company Cieffe, which is keen to point out that it was the first manufacturer to use a 2-megapixel image sensor in this type of application, and that’s exactly what you get with this camera.
The sensor in question is a CMOS, progressive-scan type with a 1600 x 1200 pixel array. Low-light sensitivity is claimed to be 0.8 lux and the exposure options include manual and automatic white balance, backlight compensation and a low-light black and white mode.
Video images are processed using MPEG-4 compression (JPEG and H264 also available) and it can deliver up to four streams at different resolution and quality settings simultaneously; maximum resolution is up to 1280 x 960 at 25fps and it has a built in web-server and a two-way audio facility. Normally at this point we would start to work through the long list of ancillary functions that enrich (or bedevil – depending on your point of view) most network cameras but on this occasion that’s really all there is to it.
There’s not a great deal to say about the exterior either, it looks pretty much like any other general purpose surveillance camera, with a C/CS lens mount on the front and a standard 4-pin auto iris socket on the side. In fact the only clue to its network affiliations is the LAN socket on the rear. Incidentally, the camera is PoE (Power over Ethernet) compatible or it can be powered from an external 12VDC supply.
To the left of the LAN socket is a pair of indicator LEDs, the first one ‘L1’ comes on when power and LAN are connected, the other one, labelled ‘L2’ is a bit of a mystery since there’s no reference to it anywhere in the supplied literature and PDFs, but we can tell you it glows red and sometimes green…
On the right of the LAN socket is a spring-terminal socket for RS485 comms and below that is another row of sockets, there’s a 4-way plug-in terminal block for an alarm connection and 12VDC supply, plus two 3.5mm minijacks for audio in and out. A slot for an SD memory card, for local recording of still images and short video clips, is on the bottom right hand corner of the back panel.
The camera is housed in a two-part steel case. Inside there is a pair of PCBs running the length of the box; the image sensor is mounted on a third board at the front and interconnections between the PCBs are by short ribbon cables. It’s a simple, robust design, there’s very little to go wrong and the standard of construction and materials appears to be very good indeed.
Setup and operation
The camera’s setup menu and image viewer can be accessed through a standard web browser, though we’ll deduct a couple of points because it is confined to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which means it is inaccessible from Mac or Linux PCs.
It should be possible to log on to the camera straight away using the default IP address, however, if for any reason this has been changed, or needs to be altered, the camera can be located on the network using the ‘Find My Device’ utility that is included on the CD-ROM. This also provides an alternate route into the camera’s configuration menus.
After entering the camera’s IP address users are asked for a password, then it requests permission to install an Active-X viewer plug-in. We had a few problems with this and IE7 appeared to ‘lose’ it several times, even though it was shown on the list of add-ons, but it kept asking to be re-installed each time we logged on to the camera.
Once or twice we were also unable to acquire an image, despite being logged on to the camera and able to enter the setup menu. This happened on three separate PCs (Windows XP and Vista), which suggests there may be a bug in the system somewhere.
Once the plug-in is installed the viewer opens to show the camera image. The viewer is generic and designed to be used with a wide range of models so there are a number of redundant features when using it to view a single camera – these include a full set of controls for a dome camera installation. On a single static camera setup the active components are switches for full screen display, still image capture, archived recordings, stream selection and two-way audio, if the camera is connected to a microphone and speaker.
On the browser setup screen there are nine tabs leading to various sub menus. From the top they are Main (for setting passwords), Network (setting IP address, submask etc.) and Server (camera setup – resolution, exposure, sharpness, colour, low-light settings – MPEG4 setup, web server and streaming setup, PTZ protocols).
The SD/MMC Recorder tab covers configuration settings for the memory card. Audio enables the audio input and output channel. Date and Time sets the internal clock manually or enables the NTP client for synchronising with Internet time servers. The View tab leads to a set of pages summarising the configuration settings. Factory Default returns the camera to its out of the box settings, and last but not least, the Status menu provides access to another set of configuration summary screens and system logs
Performance
Up until this point there really hasn’t been much to get excited about, but here’s where the MegaPX really starts to show its mettle – and as they say in the movie business, all the money is up there on the screen.
Picture quality on the highest settings is outstanding, easily the best we’ve seen on any IP camera to date, and it would give quite a few analogue cameras a good run for their money as well. The image is crisply detailed and in good natural light colours are rich and natural-looking.
The auto exposure systems cope well with a wide range of lighting conditions, including fairly rapid changes in levels, and backlight compensation is quite effective. Although not billed as a low-light camera, it actually gives a very good account of itself, switching to a black and white image when light levels fall below a preset threshold. Unusually there’s also the option to switch to a green and black image when in low-light/night vision mode.
Changing the quality and resolution settings does bring about a reduction in picture quality but even at the lowest levels it still looks very good indeed. Image stability throughout our tests was excellent and the customary beating from the SI rubber mallet produced no ill effects.
