Published on: 01.02.2019

I bought this camera from Deal Extreme, almost a decade ago.

Anyway, if plan to use this camera first step is to upgrade to the newest firmware, on official website I found nothing, but they do have some software tools, luckily there are instructions on Deal Extreme Forums.

I did my firmware upgrade step by step, from a version on my camera to the next firmware version.

Maybe upgrade to last would firmware work also, but I did not want to take unnecessary risk and brick my device.

There is an upgrade for System firmware and Embedded Web UI first upgrade System firmware and then Embedded Web UI.

Also, there is similar model fi8918w, AFAIK last firmware version should not be upgraded to this model.

Be sure to understand procedure from Deal Extreme Forums before starting the firmware upgrade process.

My experience with a version with last firmware

The camera is giving 640×480 image, during the daylight it is acceptable, during the night you can see that somebody is there but not who, so it is not useful in a night mode.

Movement of a camera is possible, it is working fine but web UI for control is not working on IPad only regular PC browsers.

The device should offer an audio connection, but I have not used it

WiFi connection I have used, I just trust the cable more :-).

The camera also has an IO port for motion detection and trigger, but I have not used it.

There is also a possibility of motion detection, recording of video/pictures and sending to email and FTP upload.

I have not tested this feature because it is only working on Microsoft Internet Explorer so to use it you have to have one PC with it always running

Electricity consumption is about 3.5 till 4 watts/hour on 230 voltage.

I did notice that it need to be restarted once per week, otherwise, it will just get stuck.

Should you use this camera

It depends on what purpose you want to use it.

If you want to have a daylight live stream without recording and alarms and it is OK for you to restart it every week that it is fine.

Also one decade ago this was a great device for its price, today it is better to get a camera on Raspberry Ri with motionEye.

If you plan to use this camera with motionEye add it as Network Camera.