If you’re looking for a cheap night vision camera, the Airlink101 
The image of the raccoon was captured by the camera and stored on sensr.net. This blog entry will show you how to get your SkyIPCam500W connected to sensr.net so you can keep an eye on those nocturnal happenings too. (Note the instructions here are for the SkyIPCam500W but they are very similar to other Airlink101 Internet cameras. If you have a different model SkyIPCam, read on.)
It’s pretty easy to setup the SkyIPCam500W (aka AICN500W) to work with sensr.net. In fact, if you have the camera already connected to your WiFi network, you just have to modify two configuration settings.
There are three steps to getting this to work:
- Click Add Camera on sensr.net to get an FTP login
- Put the FTP login information into your camera’s Event Server setting
- Add a Schedule Trigger on your camera’s Event Config page
Add a New Camera to your Sensr.net Account
Login to Sensr using your Facebook user name and password. Select the “add a camera” link link at the top of the page next to your picture.
Click 'add a camera' to get started with Sensr.net
You should then see this page where you can read more about cameras or if you’re ready to add your camera to Sensr, then click the “add a camera” button.
Add a camera page.
Next you’ll see this page, which allows you to name your camera and set it’s timezone. It also gives you the FTP credentials for your camera.
Camera credentials and image scanner.
The above page will continue to scan for images on the Sensr server. Leave that window open and go to your camera configuration page in a new browser window.
Tell your camera about Sensr.net
Now that we have your FTP credentials, we need to put them into your camera so it will send images to sensr.net. Go to your camera’s admin page and click on Setup > Event Server > FTP and you should see a page like this:
FTP Event Server page for AICN500W
Take the ftp server, username, and password and add them here. Make sure Passive mode is enabled and click “Apply”.
Next click on Event Config > Schedule Trigger and you should see a page like this:
Schedule Trigger page for AICN500W
Check the enable box under FTP Schedule. Then click the button next to 1 frame/sec and hit the “Apply” button. This tells your camera to FTP an image per second to the sensr.net FTP server we setup in the previous step.
If you go back to the previous Sensr.net page, you should see an image from your camera. It should look something like this:
Success!
At this point you are done. You can close the browser window pointed at your camera and go back to Sensr. Click on the “Take Me To My Camera” button to see the Gallery view of images coming from your camera.
Now you can share your camera and its images with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Have fun!
Everything entered as above and ftp test said upload OK but no picture. Does port number have anything to do with no picture. Still scanning for picture.
Larry,
Yes, the port should be 21 as shown above. The camera will keep scanning until the server sees an image. Send email to info at sensr.net with your camera id and maybe we can help you figure out what’s wrong.
It’s odd that the upload test works.
Adam
Thanks, will send info as instructed. Appreciate your help.
Hey Adam, Thanks for your help, I got my camera up and running and it is great. Planning to add another camera and upgrade my plan. Great job guys!!! Larry
Sweet! Glad you got it working.
I also have the airlink 500w and cannot get it to upload. Says ftp failed. My dlinks work fine. I am on port 21. I love your website. Thanks.
Any suggestions?
Camera Name: cam.3
Location:
Firmware Version: 1.0.0 build: 30
Video & Audio
MJPEG Resolution: VGA
Microphone In Enable
Network
IP Mode: Static
IP Address: 10.0.1.240
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 10.0.1.1
MAC Address: 00:21:2F:2B:00:DF
Primary DNS Address:
Secondary DNS address:
UPnP Enable : Enable
HTTP Port: 80
Wireless
ESSID: FB1 VAN #2
Connection: Infrastructure
Channel: 11
Authentication: WPA2-PSK
Encryption: AES
This would be a good place to add ALL the special secret instructions necessary to actually make one of these cameras work with sensr.net. Or at least work sometimes, which they don’t always by any means. I can only tell you ONE of the necessary special secret instructions that I have learned so far: DNS must be set on the cameras on the relevant page http://YourLocalIPorDynamicDomainName.net:NumericPortNumber/admin/setup.cgi?page=network to be 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, and this secret was given to me without any reason WHY it’s necessary so I can’t reveal the whole secret here, you just have to try it and see if it makes your camera functional on sensr.net. They aren’t necessary to make your camera work with a dynamic domain name via dyndns.org, so there doesn’t seem to be any real reason WHY those special DNS IPs are needed, THEY JUST ARE.
Now if anyone can ever figure out how to KEEP one of these cameras working on sensr.net after you have got it all set up and working once, I would sure like to hear about it. Because they don’t.
Another problem I’m having with a second, identical camera is that it sets up okay, FTP tests that it’s working okay, but only a black image shows up on sensr.net even when the camera is perfectly accessible and working fine through its own software. Nothing I do will fix it on sensr.net, it’s acting like it takes the camera image and just turns every pixel black.
It’s a shame that they’ve got such a great concept and given it such a poor implementation; there are lots of flaws and bugs big and little still scattered everywhere through the website that make it klunky to use. If I could ever get sensr.net working right with my cameras I’d probably do a paid subscription for the extra features, but what’s the point if it only works a day or two before it quits and then a week of screwing around with it gets you nowhere and tech support doesn’t even answer your emails?
I’ve had one working for years with no problems.
I’m surprised you say we don’t answer your emails. I logged onto your first camera and got it working for you when you filed a support issue with us. Don’t you remember? That seems like pretty stellar service for a free service, don’t you think?
Yes Adam that was real stellar service initially, once, but when your website failed to function anymore with the camera after a day or two (the camera’s been working fine throughout) and just quit working with no apparent cause, no error messages, nothing, I was left high and dry with no reply to TWO emails to support since it last worked on June 24th, almost two weeks. And that’s NOT stellar service. So it was all for nothing, so far at least, what a waste don’t you think? I’ve spent hours and hours trying to bring that camera back online on your site and my feeling is that I’m just missing some trivial little special secret that you take for granted (like the first fix with the DNS entries, who’d have guessed that fix if it’s not in the setup instructions?) but which isn’t documented anywhere accessible (and no, hunting through a long history of random blog entries on many peripheral topics which may or may not have useful clues buried somewhere in them is not ‘accessible’). The problem is exacerbated by your website design which somebody decided to build so it looks ‘pretty’ but in a clumsy nonstandard way so that links are not visible as links unless you mouseover them (and sometimes not even then) and it’s necessary to tediously hunt with the mouse through every single element on every page in the hope there’ll be some kind of solution–which now, apparently, after weeks of hunting, it seems there is none. Not a very satisfying experience overall. I can handle a clumsy website allright but not a nonfunctioning one. If only the setup instructions were thorough and complete!
I did get a second camera working by setting it up exactly like the first one which doesn’t work anymore, so there’s apparently a large random component to how your site chooses which cameras it will work with and which it won’t. Or maybe it’s for how long, who knows? There’s certainly nothing to give me confidence that it won’t suddenly quit working like the first one. I think you’ve got a real nice idea here but it suffers from a very poor implementation and from unknown and unknowable absolute dead ends which are impossible to ever get past.
I agree that getting the cameras working on the site is a major stumbling block.
The SkyIPCam cameras are quite old at this point. Have you thought about the possibility that the cameras just don’t work? Wireless cameras, especially older models like yours, are notorious for dropping of the wifi. I have one of these and it runs fine when wired…
You didn’t see any errors from our site because we don’t send errors when cameras are no longer sending us data. Perhaps we should make that an option. We do have daily summaries that can help. But an alert when a camera goes awol is a good idea.
I’m sorry you’re not happy with the site or the support. We’re working hard to make Sensr.net a great product. We try our best to support our users. We do have to balance supporting free users and building our company and product.
I appreciate you taking the time to give us feedback.