Panasonic Network Camera and Pet Cam (BLC1A)
From Panasonic
List Price: $96.99
Price: $83.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Average customer review: 
Customer Reviews
Panasonic Pet CAm BLC1A
I thought the camera worked great. The set up was not difficult but be aware you will need to purchase a router and a cat 5 cable if you do not have one.
WORKS BETTER THAN EXPECTED
This is an EASY cheap way to check in on your baby/sitter. FORGET it if your a mac user. I have two macs and 1 PC on my network, after an hour reading the Mac directions here I gave up. Took 5 minutes to set it up with the cd on the PC. After set up YES you can see it online, log in online anywhere to see it, even tried on an iphone. The night time feature is not so hot so I set up a small 15 watt light in the baby’s room and it was a-ok 
I purchased a 2nd camera and it does not want to go live online, have to give panasonic a call to see what’s what. The free service they give is awesome for going live online but I’m not sure if you can use it with multiple cameras. I have to say it was worth every penny when you look at what some of these cameras can cost.
Good, small package with some limitations
I recently had something damaged ($$$$) in my apartment and both cleaning lady and Super denied involvement, so I figured that at least going forward I should be smart about my stuff. I was looking for a “small” surveillance solution (”small” in size, effort, running cost, intrusion, and wallet), and so far, the Panasonic seems to fit my bill. Details:
HARDWARE:
This device has a somewhat odd shape which, together with the bright white enclosure makes it stand out a little too much for my taste, especially if you planned to discretely put it on a bookshelf. Inside the (easily openable) enclosure, you’ll find a single square motherboard where the actual camera is soldered onto. Bummer for those DIY-ers who perhaps hoped to separate the cam from the board in order to conceal it in a stuffed animal or something. The camera has a power led which to my surprise is software- controllable: it can be on, off, or on while recording.
The camera sensor itself is very tiny. From the picture it looks like you’ll get 1/2″ worth of camera, but most of it is ornaments (like space to prominently print “digital zoom network camera”) and the CCD is no bigger than in a cheap cellphone. With that small a sensor, I would have hoped that Panasonic forewent the color filter and make the camera black&white, which would have increased sharpness and light sensitivity, but clearly engineering folded to the marketing department here. Also, the field of view seems quite narrow to me - surveillance should be as wide- angled as possible, even at the expense of detail. Finally, the resolution of the sensor is low (640×480), yet the digital noise is high. I’m subtracting 1 star for not putting in a better or more specialized camera.
SOFTWARE:
This product comes with some PC software, but frankly I haven’t touched it after reading a the other reviews here. You can set up the camera entirely with a web browser once you figured out the address. As for making the surveillance available on the net, it is no different than exposing a web server using dyndns.org.
The in-camera software is better than I expected. I addition to some camera preferences like brightness, etc. you can set days/hours of
operation, and register other cameras so you can view them all on one screen. On the actual life view screen you can specify the refresh interval or “motion” to save on bandwith when you’re monitoring remotely. In addition to live viewing, the unit can also buffer or transfer pictures. This works as follows: you have five “triggers”, which can be configured independantly. For each trigger, you can specify hours of operation, how it’s triggered (interval or motion), how many pictures to process, how long to wait to retrigger and whether to save them to internal memory, or transfer them via email or ftp. I find this concept very versatile yet understandable. The internal buffer is very small though, holds barely 90 pictures in lowres(!).
On the minus side regarding the software, the translation is sometimes challenging, especially in important sections. For example, there are two sliders on the motion detection tab, the explanation reading: “Threshold: Adjust the threshold. If the threshold is set low, this software sensitively detects changes. Sensitivity: If you set sensitivity high, amplitude of motion detection bar gets jumpy.”. I assume these sliders are meant to configure the camera so it doesn’t take your small pet for an intruder, but good luck figuring those out! Also, you cannot define any dead zones for motion detection. However, the firmware is upgradeable, so perhaps these things will improve.
This would be a 5-star device if it wasn’t for the weak and narrow- angled camera. The only two ways to go up from here though are to either shell out four times as many dollares for an Axis megapixel camera or buy a good webcam for the same price as this panasonic and then use surveillance software on an always-on PC.