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How to install an IP Camera

Chinese IP cameras have gotten really cheap over the past few years, even the nicer well known brands like the FOSCAM FI8910W pictured above can be found for less than $80 on sale.I personally have 5 cameras installed in and around my house and I use Apple/Android apps to keep tabs on them remotely.

But how do you set them up? 

Setup is easy,

Plug the IP camera into power and directly into your ethernet router

Go to your router and find the IP address of the camera, typically your router's IP address will be 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.1.1.  If you need help portforward.com has tons of free guides on how to find the camera in the attached devices page in your router. It helps to know the MAC address of the camera when looking for the attached devices in the router, on most cameras the MAC address is printed directly on the camera itself.

Another way to find the IP address is some cameras include IP scanners that will find the camera for you, FOSCAM has this software available here.

Once you have the IP Cameras address plug it into your browser and login to the camera settings page.

The default password for FOSCAMs: 

Username: admin

Password: (nothing/blank)

Once you are logged in you can view the camera from inside your home.  However, if you want to view it from outside, you can setup the camera to be accessed via iPad/iPhone apps or Android apps.

Allowing access outside your Home

To use the apps on your phone or tablet you need to forward the port from the camera to your router/firewall. In the IP Camera settings page click on 'Basic Network Settings'  you should see a page similar to the example below:

Change the HTTP Port to 8090. At default the port is at port 80, however this is a public port and used too often and in the majority of cases can cause problems. We here at Foscam recommend users to use port 8090 as it is a generally unused port and safe to use. (If you have more than one camera then they should ascend accordingly ex. 8091, 8092..)

Be sure to also uncheck obtain IP from DHCP server and set your IP address to a high number so that it isn't used by your router again for another device (or set a DHCP reservation in your router), for example if the address given to the camera was 192.168.1.12 set the IP address to 192.168.1.245 (255 maximum).

Next write down your router’s external internet IP address. The easiest way to find this would be to Google “What is my IP address” and go to the first link which pops up and that is usually whatismyipaddress.com. This address is your routers identity viewed from the rest of the world. If you want to be able to access your camera from anywhere other than the  cameras home location, you will need this address handy.

Log in to your wireless router (192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.1.1). To do this you must enter the IP address of your router into your browser and then enter the username and password when prompted.

Go through the options on your router until you find an option that says “Virtual Server”, “Port Forwarding”, or “Port Mapping” (if you have your routers manual, it should explain this as well). Once you are able to access your Port Forwarding options you need to set the the Local/Private IP address to your camera’s local IP address, set the inbound port to 8090 and the outbound port to 8090 (you can change the port numbers later). Make sure the type is either “Both” or “TCP”. Save the configuration.

To test it to see if you set it up correctly, open a browser and enter your external internet ip address into the address bar and press enter. You should arrive at your camera’s login screen. For example your whatismyipaddress.com IP address is 74.61.3.2 and you used the default port of 8090, the address of your camera accessible from anywhere in the world is: http://74.61.3.2:8090

Setting up the Apps

On Android I use IP Cam Viewer (free/$3.99)and on iOS I use LiveCams Pro ($3.99).  Both work great and allow you to pan/tilt the FOSCAM cameras as well as provide access to all the settings such as alarms and motion detection features.

To use these apps just select your make and model FOSCAM from the setup page, then input the IP address (example: 74.61.3.2) port (8090), username (admin) password (blank) and the camera will be accessible from your phone or tablet anywhere you have internet access. Below is an example of the LiveCams Pro setup page: