Camera and webcam page technical details:

My camera is an Lorex LW2200 wireless color camera, with night vision and weather resistant features, and Lorex's model LW2201 4-channel receiver. Although wireless, this camera requires an A/C (not batteries) power source. My experience with this camera is good, not fantastic. The wireless reception from outdoors to the PC is not as good as, say, a 2.4 gHz cordless telephone handset. It is rated for 450 feet with line-of-sight, but when the camera is outdoors and the receiver is indoors, they need to be within about 20 feet of each other. The A/C adapter is small and light. The cord is thin, which allows me to run it through a window to an outlet while still being able to close the window. The camera is weather resistant, but the A/C adapter needs to be protected from moisture. This camera was installed in the summer of 2010, so I don't yet know its performance in sub-freezing temperatures. The camera is jerry-rigged to a folded piece of sheet metal and hung from a shutter. The image appears with a signal strength indicator, which can't be turned off, and shows maximum strength even when the signal is weak. (You can see the green indicator below the date in my images.) The receiver is tiny, but uses non-removable, male, RCA plugs for the A/V connections. This is OK for a TV, but PC video cards and sound cards require adapters. A receiver with female plugs would be a bit more flexible.

The camera (whether outside or inside) transmits to the receiver (inside), and the receiver's RCA jacks connect to a Leadtek WinFast PVR2000 video capture card and Soundblaster sound card. (However, I only upload still images to the web site.) The PVR2000 setup process was not simple, and adapters are required for the plugs. The Leadtek card has only an S-video jack, so my Leadtek experience has been good, not fantastic. The overall video system cost (camera, capture card, and associated extras) was about $300 US.

The PC runs Windows XP Pro, with Dorgem open-source webcam capture software. Dorgem is nice for the (free) price. The images are uploaded to my remote web host (HosTek). A new image is captured each minute, overwriting the image from that time on the previous day. Because the webcam PC and the remote server are different computers in different time zones, you might not see what you think should be a current image.

I used an Astak CM-906D camera from 2006 to 2009, and it performed about as well as the Lorex, but the connections finally failed after three years of almost contstant exposure to upstate NY weather. As far as I can tell, Astak no longer makes this sort of wireless camera.