Question 1

Why is this considered wireless? You plug it into Ethernet for it to work?

Accepted Answer

It has the capability to connect wirelessly to your internet.  I would connect this camera the first time using the either net cable to my home network and do the initial configurations where you assign it a static IP address (something like 192.168.1.10 or so).  Once that is completed you can take the camera any where with in your wireless network's signal range.  The user manual has step by step instructions. Hope this helps!

Question 2

Can this camera transmit to the internet without a computer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the camera has a web page where you can see the live view of the camera in your local network.

Viewing over the public internet is another matter, separate from the camera. You will need to configure your router to port forward a particular port to the camera's IP address. Then you will need to find your router's public IP address assigned by your cable/DSL company. You could also use a dynamic dns service to remember your public IP address. Search Google for "port forward" and "dynamic dns".

Question 3

I was wondering how long the actual DC cable was and how easy would it be to hide the cable in a small household environment, also i plan on implementing an additional wireless router in the house on a separate channel dedicated to the cameras and it would be plugged into my router that is for my home lan and acts as a gateway, does the cloud software require port forwarding?

Accepted Answer

Cable wire is 5 ft. Dimension of the camera are 2+ by 3+ inches approx but with the stand, it looks a lot bigger. If your requirements are for a spy cam, then this is not for you but if you just need if for monitoring ie; kids in the living room while you're the in 2nd flr, then this would suffice. You can put in a separate network on your home but if you want to view externally then you need to bridge it to your gateway. I dont think this unit supports cloud services. D-link has one with cloud support for 20 dollars more or try TV-IP751WIC which is +10 dollars. The software at the time I used it was very buggy so I decided just to do my own implementation. The 2wire modem from att (dsl or uverse) supports port forwarding to any port so you can view via http in your DMZ secured with just a username password. Not sure if this applies to comcast or to other service providers. If you have a  hacker neighbor (who doesn't ? :-)  ) who might be doing a ip/port scan on the isp network, I suggest you want to secure it via ssh or a different software. Hope this helps.

Question 4

Is this camera compatible with Macs? I know there is an iphone app, but I wasn't sure about being able to install without a PC.

Accepted Answer

In a nutshell yes.  The regular computer interface is browser based.  I there is an installable plugin for streaming video live through that same interface but I honestly haven't tried the macos/Linux portion that's available because I simply never needed to try.

You can get the plugin that's Linux compatible (which is all a mac is) from Trendnet downloads.  They wouldn't let me post the link.  :\

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