How To: Configure EasyN IP Web Camera

Call me paranoid but I love to have a way to check my house is ok when I’m away. The obvious choice is a webcam and the requirements I had were:

• Wireless: I wanted to be able to put it anywhere in the house.
• Night vision: Most burglars aren’t polite enough to wait for daylight.
• Motion sensor: If someone breaks in I want to know immediately.
• Cost-effective: i.e. cheap!

Not as important but also a consideration was:

• Remote pan and tilt: so I could control the viewing angle.
• Audio: both listening and shouting at the burglar!

I eventually settled on the EasyN Wireless IP camera with 2-way Audio. Despite some poor reviews on Amazon.co.uk I felt I would be OK at configuring it. As it turned out it was a bit of a fiddle so I can understand why some people had trouble.
Hopefully these notes will help someone else setting up the same camera… or me when I come to adjust my own!
A couple of important points about this camera which I would imagine catch a number of people out (they did me):

• By default it is set to an IP of 192.168.1.126 this may not match your network (often set as 192.168.0…
• Wired and Wireless MAC addresses: Some sources say the wired and wireless MAC addresses are the same. I think if you set it to use a fixed IP it uses the same MAC on both. However I set the camera to DHCP so as to only be setting the IP in one place (the router) and to avoid potential conflicts with other devices.

Configuration

Part 1: Check the Subnet
The subnet is the first three parts of your computer’s IP address. This camera comes configured with an IP of 192.168.1.126 which may be ok for some people, but if your LAN/router is configured say for a 192.168.0… subnet then you may not be so lucky! If you are on a 192.168.1 subnet then skip to part 2.
Tell if you are on a 192.168.0 or 1 Subnet

1. In Windows: click Start and type cmd
2. At the prompt type
   ipconfig
3. Press return and you’ll see results like below:
   Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
      Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : ?????????????????
      IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.???
      Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
      Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
   But with numbers/characters instead of the ?’s
4. If your IPv4 Address is like that above Then you are on a 192.168.0 subnet

Change the Camera’s IP address/Subnet
There’s more than one way to do this but here is the method I used:

1. Insert the CD that came with the camera and load the software.
   Or download from: http://www.easyn.com/IP-search-tools.html
2. Click “Search IP Camera”, Wizard Mode
3. Connect the camera to the router or computer directly and select the relevant tab:
4. Your camera should be show in the list, select it and click Next
5. You can then use Manually Set to change the settings:
   
6. You should then be able to to log into your camera at http://192.168.0.126:81
   The default username for mine was admin with no password

You can set the camera to use DHCP via the Settings interface under Basic Network Settings. If you don’t know what DHCP is don’t worry.

Part 2: Configure the Camera

1. If you are on a 192.168.1 subnet already then plug your device in to your router and log onto http://192.168.1.126:81
2. You should see the EasyN web interface:
   
3. Click the Options on bottom right to open the Configuration interface:
   

Set a Password
If you are going to expose the camera on the web you should set a user and password other than the default in: Settings; User Settings.

Setup the Wireless
In the Configuration Interface:

1. Click “Wireless Lan Settings”
2. Click “Scan'” and select the relevant Wireless SSID (name).
3. Enter the Shared key in the box marked “Share Key”.
4. Click “Set”.

The camera will then restart.
[UPDATE] You may find as a friend did that your key doesn't work with the form e.g. if it has a # sign in it. The resolution they came up with was to grab the form post data and manually URLencode the problem characters then manually submit the resulting URL which worked for them. To quote:

"[I] finally grabbed post URL data with chrome developer tools and edited with a few esc characters. The final URL for a WPA2 PSK with AES encryption (had to escape #, % and +)

<denotes replacement strings e.g. password>

http://<your camera URL and port>/set_wifi.cgi?user=<username>&pwd=<password>&next_url=rebootme.htm&channel=5&enable=1&ssid=<yourSSID>&mode=0&encrypt=4&authtype=0&keyformat=0&defkey=0&key1=&key2=&key3=&key4=&key1_bits=0&key2_bits=0&key3_bits=0&key4_bits=0&wpa_psk=<wpapsk key with escaped characters>"

Default View Angle
When the camera reboots the default viewing angle is dead centre and up about 45’ which is ok if it’s ceiling mounted but not so great if it’s on a surface. To set the default angle:

1. Go into the web interface (http://192.168.1.126:81 by default)
2. Adjust the camera viewing angle to the desired position.
3. Click ‘Set’ and choose a number from 1-15 (I use 1-3 for defaults, 4-15 for ‘points’ e.g. 9 is left of centre, 15 is bottom right.
4. Click Options; PTZ Settings and in “Started running to the specified preset” chose the number assigned above. Optionally you can set the rotational speed.

Light display Mode
I found the flashing LED quite annoying. This can be turned off at: Options; PTZ Settings; Indicator Display Mode; Been extinguished. I would have liked it to blink when it "lost network"... but sadly mine continued to flash even when it is connected on that setting.

Email Alerts
If you want it to email you when it detects motion (see below) then you need to configure the email settings: In Settings; Mail Service Settings set the various settings according to your provider. Click Test to ensure they work before setting. For GMail I used:
SMTP: imap.gmail.com
Transport Layer Security Protocol: STARTTLS
Need Authentication: Yes
User and Password
I also clicked “Report IP by Mail”

Motion Detection
I found the default settings for motion detection were too sensitive and it was emailing me all the time with blank pictures. Change this in Settings; Alarm Service Settings. I used:
Motion Detect Armed: Yes
Motion Detection Sensibility: 3
Start the motion detection compensation: Yes
Send Mail on Alarm: Yes
I also use the scheduler which to be honest is a pain to setup: rather like minesweeper, but less exciting. The logic being I can turn off the scheduler when I’m away (remotely if I forget before I go).

Access the Camera remotely: DNS Update
Unless you have a static IP which is unlikely, to access your camera from the internet remotely you will need a dynamic IP updater service as your public (WAN) IP will change periodically. This will run on your system locally and update a DNS record on the chosen service provider with your public IP. You can check your public IP by doing a search on-line for "What is my IP".

The camera comes configured with a IPCAM DDNS provider so you can either browse to their service on-line or use a free service (e.g. http://www.dnsexit.com) or a paid one (e.g. http://www.dyndns.org) to redirect a domain name to the public IP address of your router.  You can then open a browser browse to:
http://[myusername.dnsexit.org]:[Camera Port number]

1. Setup your dynamic account with the chosen provider and get your username, password and public domain name (referred to as DDNS Host in the camera) e.g.  myname.dnsexit.org
2. To setup the DNS update service locally you can do it on the camera itself or you could do it on your router. NB: You should NOT configure it on both the router and the camera.I would recommend you do it on your router: If I configure it on the camera I get:
   ”Errors in Network Communication”
   I suspect this is either because the camera is unable to contact the DNS service or is reporting it’s LAN IP address (rather than it’s WAN IP).
   However, to do it on the camera:


1. Go to the camera's setup and select DDNS Service Settings
2. Select the service provider from the list.
3. Enter the username password and host details.
3. You will need to enable the port on your router (usually under Port Forwarding). The default is 81. Depending on your router you may need to forward it to the camera's local IP (default 192.168.1.126).