Flargen
Active member
Lots of solid info in here. pobinga also did a great job of explaining PoE (an unused pair of wires provides ~48v DC power to the endpoint).
Based on the camera model info you provided, it does have an external 12v power input (presumably a barrel connector), for which they may or may not have provided a power brick for. Find one of the appropriate amperage and connector and you should be set.
When connecting it to your laptop, you'd ultimately need to either connect it directly to your laptop via a crossover cable (basically a normal Ethernet cable, but with the Tx and Rx pairs reversed). Otherwise you'd need to connect both the laptop and camera to a switch or hub as an intermediary.
If you're set on PoE cameras (which I am - already invested in a 48-port PoE gigabit switch for my house infrastructure), go ahead and order a PoE switch with enough ports to get that ball rolling, as both PoE and non-PoE devices can be connected to it.
Regarding connecting to the camera for the first time, you may have some difficulty without vendor-specific software if you aren't familiar with networking at a basic level. You essentially need to determine what the camera's default IP address is (if any), or check whatever router is present in your network that is responsible for IP assignment (via a protocol called DHCP) to see what IP was leased to the camera when it came online. Assuming it pulls an IP via DHCP, you should be able to access it without any further configuration on the laptop you're using to configure it (provided it also pulls an IP via DHCP from the same router), typically via a web-based interface listening on HTTP or HTTPS (simple terms: assuming the camera got the IP 192.168.1.123, you'd navigate to http://192.168.1.123 or https://192.168.1.123 in your laptop's browser). Default login credentials should be provided within the camera's docs.
If you've got a friend who's handy with home networking and WiFi setup-type work, offer them a few beers to give you a crash course. It can be an exhaustive conversation starting from scratch via a forum thread.
Based on the camera model info you provided, it does have an external 12v power input (presumably a barrel connector), for which they may or may not have provided a power brick for. Find one of the appropriate amperage and connector and you should be set.
When connecting it to your laptop, you'd ultimately need to either connect it directly to your laptop via a crossover cable (basically a normal Ethernet cable, but with the Tx and Rx pairs reversed). Otherwise you'd need to connect both the laptop and camera to a switch or hub as an intermediary.
If you're set on PoE cameras (which I am - already invested in a 48-port PoE gigabit switch for my house infrastructure), go ahead and order a PoE switch with enough ports to get that ball rolling, as both PoE and non-PoE devices can be connected to it.
Regarding connecting to the camera for the first time, you may have some difficulty without vendor-specific software if you aren't familiar with networking at a basic level. You essentially need to determine what the camera's default IP address is (if any), or check whatever router is present in your network that is responsible for IP assignment (via a protocol called DHCP) to see what IP was leased to the camera when it came online. Assuming it pulls an IP via DHCP, you should be able to access it without any further configuration on the laptop you're using to configure it (provided it also pulls an IP via DHCP from the same router), typically via a web-based interface listening on HTTP or HTTPS (simple terms: assuming the camera got the IP 192.168.1.123, you'd navigate to http://192.168.1.123 or https://192.168.1.123 in your laptop's browser). Default login credentials should be provided within the camera's docs.
If you've got a friend who's handy with home networking and WiFi setup-type work, offer them a few beers to give you a crash course. It can be an exhaustive conversation starting from scratch via a forum thread.
