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Installation won’t take long as the bundled Easy Setup software searches the network and displays the camera ready for initial configuration. Sensibly, the first thing it does is insist that you provide a new username and password to protect access. We like Panasonic’s browser interface as you don’t need to leave the main viewing screen to modify the more basic settings. The controls are laid out neatly down the left side and you can easily switch between the maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels and the lower 320 x 240 and choose between quality, motion or standard picture settings. However, the top frame rate is only achievable at the lower resolutions and choosing 640 x 480 will drop this to 12fps. Pointing within the viewing area and clicking will cause the camera lens to zero in on that spot and there’s also a 10x optical zoom which is controlled simply by rotating the mouse wheel.

For motion detection you can modify the threshold and sensitivity to suit using the preview screen and bar graph. This is tied in with triggers so that when motion is detected images can be saved in the camera’s buffer, uploaded to an FTP server or emailed to three different addresses. Two other types of trigger are available with one using a simple timer to take still pictures at specific times of selected days. The second links up with the extra terminal block on the rear of the camera that can be connected to two alarms. It also has an output connector which can be linked to, say a security light, and this can be activated directly from the browser interface.

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