Obscene Art

So I bought a wireless web cam so I can keep an eye on my dog when I’m out of the house. It’s a cute little Panasonic BL-C20A. Reasonably good reviews and a reasonably good price. Problem is, it has some stupid Windows only automatic setup program. Argh. The camera itself works fine with Linux (reportedly) or Mac OS X, but you need Windows and ActiveX to install it in the only documented way. I usually don’t buy any hardware that doesn’t work out of the box with Linux (limits my hardware choices, but saves me lots of hassle). But for reasons I won’t go into, this was the only good option, so I bought it against my better judgment.

Anyway, on to the fun. The camera is completely configurable without Windows, if you’re even slightly computer savvy.

Here’s what you do:

Plug it into your DHCP enabled router. Or a switch if you have a server providing DHCP. I think you need DHCP for this, and I don’t think it knows how to fall back to a static IP address in the event DHCP fails. But maybe I’m wrong.

Turn it on.

Give it a few seconds to find an IP.

Now, run a ping scan using nmap:

$ nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24

Where 192.168.1.0 is replaced with your local network address. Find the one that isn’t one of your existing machines (hopefully you don’t have too many). Hit that address with any browser. It’ll ask you to set an admin password, and from there you can configure it just like our Windows brethren. Done! I can’t imagine why they had to write a big cumbersome ActiveX encumbered Windows application just for that, but that’s the way it is. The web-based UI seems to be browser agnostic once you’ve got it running.

It’s worth noting that the IP might also show up in your DHCP leases list…but it didn’t in my Ruckus Metroflex, so it seems to not handle DHCP correctly (or the Ruckus doesn’t…but all other devices show up in leases).