Color Wireless Spy Cam with Audio

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Julie

November 04, 2003

Product Requirements:
Device:
TV or Monitor with RCA audio / video inputs

I've made it a personal goal to "tech out" my home as much as possible in the next few months. Even though I'm the Gadgeteer, I do not have the latest and greatest smart home products. Heck, even my TV is an old (it doesn't even have S-Video) 27" Magnavox. Eck... My first step in this process is to find a good wireless camera, that I can set up to view the front of my house. My computer room is in the basement and often times, my dog will start barking upstairs to let me know that someone or something is there. It would be great if I could determine that the barking was for a human, and not a squirrel, before trekking up the stairs. The first camera that I am testing is one that I found at Brando's Workshop.

The Color Wireless Spy Cam with Audio is an inexpensive kit that includes everything you need to wirelessly view a specific area. Included in the kit:

Pinhole color camera (380 TV lines, 900MHz ~ 1200MHz)
9V battery clip
AC Adapter
Radio Receiver
Antenna
RCA audio and video cables
AC Adapter

The camera is very tiny with a wire antenna sticking out of one end, and a short cable with a connector on the other. This cable can connect to the 9V battery clip, or the AC adapter. This allows you to position the camera just about anywhere that you desire. For my purposes, I used the AC adapter and pointed the camera out the garage window towards my front door. The camera does not have any mounting brackets, so it is slightly difficult to affix to an object. I actually ended up poking a hole in a piece of cardboard, pushed the head of the camera through the hole, and taped the cardboard to the garage window. Not elegant by any stretch of the imagination. But, it worked...

Once I had the camera setup in the proper location, I then turned my attention to the A/V receiver. The receiver is a smallish rectangular metal box that does have mounting holes if you care to screw it to a wall. One end of the receiver has a connector for the movable antenna and a tuning knob. The other end has an AC adapter jack, and audio/video RCA jacks. When the A/V receiver is connected to power, a small LED on the top glows red. There isn't a power switch on the receiver...

To view the video from the camera, you have to plug the red and white RCA jacks into a free input on your TV or monitor and then depending on your TV, switch to that input. Then you turn the tuning knob on the receiver until you get a sharp picture on the TV. Here's where things get fuzzy... literally. The image that the camera puts out, isn't the best. As you can see from the picture below, it is not very sharp. What you can't see is that the colors tend to fluctuate a little every now and then, and sparkles / static appear. I also found that image quality goes downhill quickly when the lighting is low. So, if you're like me and want to see your front door, after dark, you are going to be out of luck...

At first I thought the audio part of the camera was defective. The RCA cables that come with the kit are yellow and white. So, I plugged them into the yellow and white RCA jacks on the back of the TV. The only audio that I heard was loud obnoxious static. Then it occurred to me to plug one of the cables into the red jack on my TV, and afterwards the sound was crystal clear! Where the video quality is a little iffy , the sound quality is perfect.

Overall, this kit makes a fun little first step into home surveillance. Whereas I'd like to see the video quality improved significantly, I can understand that there are tradeoffs for a camera this small and inexpensive.

 

Price: $70.00

Pros:
Easy to setup
Great audio quality

Cons:
Video quality isn't stellar