DCS-900W Wireless Internet Camera

Let’s start with the DCS-900W, a wireless Internet camera that is easy to set up and a lot of fun to use. When you unpack the DCS-900W, you’ll find:

- The camera, which looks like a half-sized soda can and is very lightweight.

- A two-piece tilt-swivel base mount for the camera, which is made of a sturdy metal, which ensures you won’t accidentally bend it in some way. With the mount, you can set the camera on any flat surface, or use the included screws to mount it to a wall.

- An A/C power supply. While it may seem something minor to stress, I really like the way D-Link’s been downsizing their power adapters so they don’t eat two full slots on your power strip.

- A Category V network cable. You’ll need this to configure the camera.

- Manual and software CD

To configure the camera, you use the included network cable to connect it to your network switch/hub and power it up. As with virtually every other D-Link product, the camera comes with a preconfigured network address that you can access through a web browser. Fire up your browser, connect to the camera’s address and you’ll be all set to configure the camera. Most of the camera configuration has to do with setting the image quality for still shots and streaming video along with the web server settings. That’s right folks, this camera comes with a built-in web server so you can connect to it from the Internet and watch the goings on in your home or office.

Once you’ve set up the camera and assigned accounts and passwords for those people you want to allow to view streaming video or snapshots, you’re all set to go as far as the camera itself is concerned. Well, actually, you have to unplug it from the network and reboot it so it can join your wireless 802.11b network. Oh, and you have to put it in whatever location you want it to track and set the focus manually. Ok, so maybe that’s two extra items, but come on; they only take about two minutes between the two of them, unless you’re putting the camera in some faraway location.

To view what’s going on in front of your camera (it’s got a pretty wide angle lens, though no zoom capability) you just punch up the IP address of the camera and choose either the Java or ActiveX viewers. Since Java is pretty much standard on every new PC, Mac or Linux box, you can start viewing right away. If you like a slightly speedier video stream that doesn’t hog up processing power on your Windows PC, you can download the ActiveX image control that is available on the product CD and D-Link’s Web site.

If there’s one complaint I have with the whole package, it’s got to be with the included IP View Lite software. While you don’t need the software, it is handy if you want to use the camera to record video streams or act as a motion detector. The problem with it is its quirky nature, sometimes taking forever to load up camera controls, other times locking up for no reason. It’s more of a hassle to use since it always crashed on me (yes, I downloaded the newest version!) but really; it wasn’t needed that often anyhow.

For those folks looking for a great wireless camera for home or work, this is a winner. It’s also pretty darned fun for LAN parties, especially when you want to monitor those cheaters in the other room during a heated Halo match. That’s right you cheating varmints, I’ve got my eye on you now!

DSM-602H/604H Express EtherNetwork Home Drive

While firewire and USB external hard drives are useful, you still have to hook them up to a PC before they’re accessible. And if you’re on a network and want to share your latest stash of game mods, patches and demos, you’ll spend way more time than necessary setting up shares. Understanding how annoying this can be, D-Link has put together the DSM-602H/604H, a 20GB (602H) or 40GB (604H) hard drive that doesn’t need a PC at all. It just plugs into your network and shares itself. Thanks to Windows XP’s Universal Plug ‘n Play support, there’s no need to mess around with sharing files and folders on either drive. Once either model of drive is on your network, it immediately sets up a universal share that any Windows XP machine can access.

The 602H/605H packages contain:

- The hard drive itself. Both units are about the size of a large paperback book and are quite light. While the casing might seem like cheap plastic at first, you can trust me that it can resist some dings and short distance drops. However, since the hard disk does have moving parts, I wouldn’t suggest dropping it.

- A power adapter. Once again, D-Link goes slim with its power supplies, making life on your crowded power strip a lot easier.

- A Category V network cable to hook the drive into your hub/switch.

- Quick set-up manual and software CD

Once you get either model drive configured, they run as advertised, sharing files and folders seamlessly over your network. The problem we encountered however was getting them to the "working point."

First and foremost, the Express Drives rely upon Windows XP’s Universal Plug ‘n Play feature, which is a bit flaky on some brands of network hardware. For example, in the DailyGame lab, we tested it out first on a Linksys BEFSR41 (found on plenty of home gamers’ networks) and it just wouldn’t work at all. The drive and switch/router combo device simply refused to talk, with the Linksys refusing to even show that the drive was plugged into it. Firmware updates for the Linksys got us nowhere, and so we moved on to Phase 2...a Linksys hub.

In Phase 2, we took a Windows XP Pro PC, the 602H (and later, a 604H we were also given to test) and an old 10/100 Linksys hub we had sitting around. Guess what? No dice, the Linksys hub did appear to allow the drive onto this mini-network, but the XP machine never saw the drive. Ok, now what? Trying to simulate a mixed environment like a home gamer would have, we dug up a Netgear 10/100 switch and hooked the PC and drive into that. Shazam! That did it, as the drive appeared immediately in "My Network Places" on the XP PC. And were the file transfers speedy!

To continue testing, and because we just can’t get enough of abusing hardware around here, we decided to make the hard drive wireless. So we put everything back on the network as normal, but plugged the 602H into a D-Link DWL 810+ Wireless Ethernet Bridge. As we expected, the drive showed up just fine over the Wi-Fi network. Problem was, we couldn’t configure it through the web interface, since it relied upon the same IP address as the wireless bridge. Pulling up that IP address would get us into the web interface for the bridge.

We just had to get into the web interface so we could assign an IP address to the drive so that non-XP machines could access it. How’d we do it? Simple, we went and hooked it up to a D-Link network switch/router combo device (we could’ve also used the Netgear switch again, but just had to try adding something new to the mix) that assigned it a dynamic address and put it on the network. This reminds me, you have to either have a router/switch that can assign IP addresses (it needs to support DHCP) or a server on the same network that uses DHCP to assign IPs or you won’t have any way to configure the drive.

Once you figure out what IP the drive has been assigned by your DHCP server, you enter that address into a browser and you can get cracking on configuring the drive. First things first, set a static IP address for the drive. That way, other PCs can get to it by accessing the address, and you can take the drive onto any network (providing they aren’t using Linksys router/switches) and access it. This really should be done if you want the drive to be portable in any way.

After you’ve configured the drive, you’ll find it operates like any other hard drive. It’s 20GB (or 40GB for the 604H) of storage that is fast and quiet. And since it plugs into your network, it’s one less thing to have dangling off the side of your PC, just waiting for a friend to knock on the floor by mistake.

Once we dealt with the frustration of getting the drives working (I blame Linksys for what I can only imagine is some imperfect Universal Plug ‘n Play support) they are great for gaming. You can store saves, mods, skins, maps and patch files on them and those files will be instantly accessible to anyone on your network. That is, provided you get that IP address configured, which in my opinion should have been locked down right out of the box. The reliance on a dynamic address to get things started makes it a somewhat frustrating experience getting this drive configured for use by non-Windows XP machines. It’s odd that just about every D-Link device on the market save this one comes with a pre-set IP address for ease of configuration. Instead, with these drives you have to know where to find the DHCP clients table on your server or network hardware so you can figure out what address the drive was assigned. A pain to say the least, but a minor pain compared to the pleasure of having 20GB (or 40GB) of storage readily accessible at network speeds.