Kitteh! Cam

Setting up a WiFi enabled home security camera turns out to not be the simplest task in the world with the Insteon Device 46 (picked up at a recently closed RadioShack). Turns out it's not actually difficult, but it is far from the user friendly experience I would have expected with an off-the-shelf consumer product.

The camera has to be plugged into your router, you have to manually set up the WiFi connection, then you make sure the DHCP settings are set up correctly, then you can connect locally through the web interface. If you want to connect from outside your local network, you have to set up port forwarding (and should also set the camera to a static IP address).

My favorite part of this process: the quick-start guide. Here's page 1 from the guide (no joke):

Is this nerd profiling?

I knew right away that I'd be able to get things set up without much trouble.

Here it is in action as a Kitteh! Cam (that's my cat, Kitteh!, checking it out):

Kitteh! Cam

One last thing to note about this setup: rather than connect through Insteon's web interface, buried in the manual is a suggestion to use the IP Cam Viewer app (on Android). For some reason, this camera is not on the list of compatible cameras for the app, but you can get it working by selecting the Foscam FI8918W camera instead.

Next steps: figure out how to control the camera directly, without the web interface or an app - maybe with UPnP? - and get control with Raspberry Pi and/or Arduino.