I just received my FOSCAM Fi8918w which works like a charm for the price.
Now, I’d like to install one in the garage, and one in each kids room.
Anybody did that already ? I am curious about the best way to provide power to the camera if it’s on the ceiling for example…
Please share your tricks
I am sharing my own experience at http://www.Universe-Corrupted.com
There is not much yet, but I’m adding little by little, since I just started.
Next step are the Kwikset lock, and a home-made z-wave garage opener.
Probably the best thing to do is to hard wire it with a cat 5 cable and modify it with a POE injector / splitter… Something like the below or hack it yourself if you feel confident.
[quote=“strangely, post:2, topic:166698”]Probably the best thing to do is to hard wire it with a cat 5 cable and modify it with a POE injector / splitter… Something like the below or hack it yourself if you feel confident.
Forgive my ignorance, but can you use the POE injectors with Foscam? I didn’t think Foscan supported power through the RJ45 jack like I think Panasonic does and the injectors that are linked don’t pull the power back out at the camera to plug into the power port.
The idea as a whole works, but I think you have to do the poorman’s method of cutting the power supply jack and wiring it in and out of the Cat5 at the camera to plugin to power port yourself using the two unused wires in the Cat5, at least with the Foscam but I could be wrong here.
I sent an email to FOSCAM TECH SUPPORT in order to see if they support PoE.
There is no documentation with this cam… yet…
Since the camera is wireless, it would be nice NOT to have to run a cat5 cable for the power.
I was thinking about getting power from one of the electrical plugs in the bedroom, snake an electrical wire to the attic (ceiling of the room), put a junction box with a plug, then plug the cam… with eventually a zWave module (on/off) in case I need to remotely reboot the camera…
Looks like it’s going to be this way. No matter what, I will try to take pictures of what I am doing and put it in my web site, hopping it will help the next person who’s trying to do the same thing…
@shady, Although the camera itself isn’t POE (via its own cat 5 jack) the injector has an “in” and “out” injector. The out injector has a power jack that you just plug into the regular Foscam power input.
This is correct. If you are installing the camera next a plug, then there is no need to for PoE. Technically, there is no need for PoE at all, it was just easier for me to run cat5 instead of installing a new outlet outside where the camera is located. I’m using one of the outdoor foscam cameras. It doesn’t have PTZ but at least it’s weather proof.
I mounted mine on the ceiling using the bracket they provided. For power I ran it down tot he nearest outlet (which in my case was straight down. I ended up having to cut a small hole in the gyproc where the wall meets the ceiling to help get the cable down. I cut the power cable to extend it. At the power plug side I just made a small noth in the bottom of the outlet cover plate and fed it around the electrical box. It was a bit tricky fishing it through this opening from the top. This was an inside wall, so no insulation to worry about. While it’s a bit of a hack, the result looks fine.
I spoke with FOSCAM TECH SUPPORT and the camera is not PoE.
So it looks like I will have to hack some electrical outlet like you did.
Since there is a couple of outlet in my baby’s room, I was thinking about hacking one of them, and snaking the cable up to the attic. Then from there, make an electrical outlet, and feed the camera in the ceiling.
Could you provide pictures of your installation ?
Is there any recommendation regarding an outlet in the attic ?
I’m thinking about tossing in there a ON/OFF Z-Wave module, just in case I need to hard reboot the camera…
I spoke with FOSCAM TECH SUPPORT and the camera is not PoE.
So it looks like I will have to hack some electrical outlet like you did.
Since there is a couple of outlet in my baby’s room, I was thinking about hacking one of them, and snaking the cable up to the attic. Then from there, make an electrical outlet, and feed the camera in the ceiling.
Could you provide pictures of your installation ?
Is there any recommendation regarding an outlet in the attic ?
I’m thinking about tossing in there a ON/OFF Z-Wave module, just in case I need to hard reboot the camera…[/quote]You are correct, the camera isn’t POE but this is where the POE inserter and splitter comes in. It’s easier to run a cat5 cable than it is to run an power cable. Its probably not code compliant either to run a power through the wall / ceiling without having an outlet near the camera.
I went to lowes tonight, and I will take pictures tomorrow.
I am going to split the power from an electrical outlet and run a cable up to the attic.
From that, I’ll install an electrical outlet in the attic on a beam, and plug the power directly into it.
I think everything should be OK with good preparation. The outlet I am using is linked to a switch that can turn it off. This way, I can use it to hard reboot the camera.
If you’ve got an attic above I think that is a better option than what I did. My install was on the ground floor (two storey home), so I couldn’t do that. I’ll take some pics of my install anyway and post them. I repaired the hole I made in the wall but I still haven’t repainted it so it’s actually perfect for giving you an idea of what I did.
I am actually done.
I will upload my blog since we can’t post pics over 512k here.
It works perfectly. I added a single pole switch in the attic so if I need to hard reset the cameras for any reason, I can just flip off and on.
More to be followed…
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