LITTLE ROCK — Happy Halloween!
I must admit, this is my favorite celebration (besides Christmas). Playing all those tricks ... I mean, giving all those treats, of course.
Anyway, let’s get to some tech talk. First, I need to clear something up and own up to a mistake.
I mentioned in last week’s review that the iPod touch has an 8-megapixel camera, and I complained that it looked terrible in low light. I stand by my complaint about the appearance of the photos, but apparently there’s a reason for that. Actually, the still camera wasn’t upgraded — Apple has just promoted the HD video capabilities more this time. While the lack of upgrade certainly explains why low-light photos are still terrible, it’s left me to wonder why Apple didn’t upgrade the camera when it upgraded other features. But, there you go.
Yes, even reviewers get confused sometimes. But I am nothing if not crazy, so of course I’m going to follow up a camera boo-boo (Halloween, boo, get it?) by doing what? You guessed it — reviewing a camera.
I promise I have the specs and info on this one. This is also Apple-related, but only in that you use an app with the camera. This camera is from Stem, and it’s called the iZon Remote Room Monitor.
The Room Monitor is small, about the size of a roll of half dollars. It includes a power cord that connects via the mini USB port on the back. The camera comes with a plate that you can use to mount the camera permanently, or you can just set it up somewhere and keep it portable. It has a magnet in the round base that’s included, as well as a magnet below the camera. This allows you to swivel the camera 360 degrees and change the angles from about 70 degrees to about 110 degrees.
That’s all that comes with the camera. The final piece of the puzzle is a free application download from Apple’s App Store. You simply search for Stem and find the Stem: Connect app.
It takes a few minutes to set up the camera, which is all done through the application. You’ll need to set up an account with Stem, and if you have a YouTube account, you can add that for recordings. The process took less than 10 minutes for me.
The camera uses your local Wi-Fi connection (which is required) to transmit to the app, but you can use the app on Wi-Fi or cellular signals. There is about a 20-second delay on the video, but it’s close enough to give you an idea of what is going on.
The camera offers alerts for motion, audio and if the camera goes offline. The You-Tube feature I mentioned is very cool. If it does detect motion or unusual audio, it records about 15 seconds of it and sends it to your You-Tube account. It marks the videos as private so only you can see them. You also can go into the settings and draw a box on the picture specifying where you want motion detected, and how sensitive the camera should be.
The camera worked great in both daylight and low light, but the camera isn’t infrared and won’t work in the dark. It’s not the highest quality, but it’s good enough to see what’s happening.
I did have an issue with this camera’s motion alerts. It’s supposed to make a list of alerts and details like the time they occurred, and pop an Alerts tab up on the main pages when you have alerts. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the alerts to come across completely.
You don’t get alerts if you’re on the same network. The camera smartly assumes you’re at the location. The problem is, once I went off location, I got the Alerts tab to pop up, but when I clicked on the Alerts panel, I got nothing. No matter how many times I checked, I never could get any alert information to pop up.
That said, the camera did exactly what it was supposed to do when it came to posting the motion alerts on You-Tube. I checked my YouTube account and, lo and behold, there were videos waiting for me, all marked private, all showing motion (usually me). So that part worked perfectly.
The only other issue is that the app crashed on more than one occasion, particularly on the iPhone. Usually it restarted quickly and worked OK after that, though. I’ve no doubt they’ll fix that with an update soon. I constantly have apps update.
I really like this little camera. It worked well in regular and low light. It’s easy to install and use. It can be accessed from just about anywhere. The app can use a bit of tweaking, but I’m sure that will happen.
The Room Monitor is perfect for hiding someplace and playing a few tricks on people.
“Mom, stop sampling from the trick or treat bowl. Hahahaha!”
Have fun and be safe, kids.
Where it’s @
Stem’s iZone Remote Room Monitor requires a Wi-Fi network and iPhone, iPod or iPad device running the Stem: Connect app. The camera retails for $129. More information is available at steminnovation.com/section/ iZON/24/.
Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e-mail at mljones72@me. com.
Business, Pages 21 on 10/31/2011