Our Y-Cam Knight continues to impress (read my full review here). Here’s a screen grab from my iPhone from a few weeks ago, showing our cheeky little boy in all of his glory.

Sadly, Henry is now able to climb up the sides of his cot, so the Y-Cam has had to beat a hasty retreat to the top of his wardrobe. Rather than these great close-ups we now have a wide angle view of his bedroom, and we have to be content with seeing his little body wriggling through the bars of his cot. Time for Y-Cam to provide a version with a decent zoom lens?

£154.99 from CMaC

Can a security camera babysit?

Tell yourself that this is far superior to any video baby monitor currently on the market. You’ll be able to show off live video of your sleeping baby on your iPhone from anywhere in the world, and who knows what kinky applications you’ll think up when you can finally afford that Swedish au pair.

Tell your wife that this essential device will allow you to keep a tearful eye on your little baby whenever you are kept away from home on business. Buying the Y-Cam Knight would be a testament to your fatherly love.

Why would you want a simple video baby monitor that can only display images on a tiny little screen and only within a 10-metre range of your nursery? What you really want is one that can publish live video and audio on the Internet so you can check on your baby from your laptop down at the local pub.

Of course, I am joking. You should never, EVER take a risk with something so precious. Many a laptop has come to a sticky end after a pint of beer has been spilt on it. Luckily, the video stream from the Y-Cam Knight can also be viewed from your mobile phone – problem solved!

The perfect choice for voyeurs

The Y-Cam Knight is a wireless ‘IP camera’ or ‘network camera’ – basically a webcam that connects wirelessly to your home network rather than to a computer. The benefit is that you can have the camera on 24 hours a day without requiring a power hungry PC to be plugged in to the other end. The downside is that you do need a wireless home network for it to be of any use. For use as a baby monitor you also really need a laptop and/or a mobile phone with a web browser to make the solution workable.

Inside the camera is essentially a mini computer that can send the video and audio out through your network and even over the Internet. While such cameras are usually designed for security and voyeur fetish pornography applications, they also turn out to be cracking video baby monitors.

I bought my Y-Cam Knight from the good people over at CMaC who delivered it promptly and provided a very friendly service. I have been using the Y-Cam Knight for a solid 2 months now, and I can honestly say that my wife and I could not imagine life without it.

Plug-in, upgrade, configure, nibble a Rusk

You need to set up the camera by connecting it by Ethernet cable directly to your home network router. You can then connect to the camera from a web browser on your computer (using the IP address that your router has assigned the camera), from where you can use the web interface to configure its wireless connection. At this point I would also strongly recommend downloading the latest firmware from Y-Cam’s web site and installing it on the camera – the firmware that my camera shipped with was full of bugs and caused a world of trouble by never picking up any wireless networks. With the fresh firmware installed and the wireless configuration sorted, you can unplug the network cable and move the camera to your preferred location. As soon as you power it up, it will connect wirelessly to your network and away you go!

Y-Cam loves PC, tolerates Mac

Connecting with Internet Explorer on a PC will give the streaming video together with audio. You then have options to alter the microphone volume, digitally zoom the image, save snapshots or video files, and adjust the resolution. Connecting with any browser (e.g. Safari or Firefox) on an Apple Mac will simply show you the live video stream without any sound and without any fancy options. Shame on Y-Cam! However, there is an option to get audio on the Mac too – I’ll discuss this later.

The Knight eats carrots

The camera also includes a bank of infrared LEDs that light up the scene beautifully at night without frightening your child with a bright torch (although the LEDs do dimly glow red). This gives really clear images Henry rubbing his eyes and wriggling about while he tries desperately not to fall asleep.

The only downside of the camera’s infrared sensitivity is that it does distort colours somewhat during the day, such as turning blacks to purple. However, this shouldn’t give you too many problems and during night use the image is black and white anyway.

More versatile than a spork

The camera has a host of configuration options in the settings menu. There are many advanced settings that are aimed at security applications (e.g. e-mailing or FTPing an image when motion is detected), although you might be able to find some innovative uses for them in a baby monitoring situation. More useful are the 3 separate video streams that you can configure (for resolution, bandwidth etc.) and access individually through a web browser or through a Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) connection. RTSP basically opens up a video player like QuickTime to handle the video streaming and it is by using this QuickTime stream that Mac users can actually access the audio portion of the connection too.

iPhone iShmone

Unfortunately the iPhone is not compatible with RTSP and so can only be used to watch the streaming video (without sound) through its Safari browser. This works pretty well, although it does seem to slow down the iPhone even when you are out of Safari, unless you close down the browser window that is connected to your camera.

The other problem with viewing through the iPhone is that you have to enter your username and password on a regular basis before you can see the stream. Furthermore, constant viewing through Safari, with the iPhone’s auto-lock turned off, drains the battery quicker than shoving your tongue into the charger socket. Y-Cam really needs to produce a dedicated iPhone app to solve all of these problems and make it far more usable.

Share the joy

Viewing on your home network is as simple as typing in the camera’s IP address in your web browser, but what about accessing the camera over the Internet? To do this you’ll need to setup a free dynamic DNS account (such as with DynDNS.com) and adjust a few settings on the camera. Once this is done you’ll have a web address that you can use from anywhere in the world to access your camera (with a user name and password). I’ve tried this from around the UK and the results are impressive – I obtained a very clear image with about 2 frames per second (compared to 30 frames per second on my home network). The great idea here is that you can give access to Grandmas, Grandads, Aunties and Uncles – allowing everyone to see your little bundle of joy as he creates an expanding puddle of drool on the bed sheets.

Not just the dadgetry

I’ve talked a lot about the technology, but I also feel that I must mention the mount that comes with the camera. You need this mount to stand the camera on a flat surface or secure it on a wall or ceiling, but sadly it is poorly designed. I have it on the edge of Henry’s cot but the design prevents it from being angled downwards enough to actually see the bottom of the bed. The only way I could achieve this was by attaching the camera upside down on the mount, which then gave enough room for the camera to angle down far enough. Fortunately there is an option in the camera settings that allows you to flip the image back to the right way up, but a better-designed mount would have been far easier.

Dadgets.info says that if you’re in the market for a video baby monitor, and you already have a wireless home network and a laptop or iPhone, then I strongly recommend considering the Y-Cam Knight. It provides great video, both day and night, and is far more versatile than any standard video baby monitor available today.

Grin like a child at the superb night vision images, the hugely customisable video stream, and the endless applications when your baby monitoring days are finally over.

Cry like a baby at the poorly designed mount, the limited Mac support, and the lack of a dedicated iPhone app.

Dadgets.info rating: 9 out of 10

We’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of something highly important, like browsing for hairy armpit fetish pornography, and then your baby monitor shrieks out a weird wailing sound. Your wife looks at you from the kitchen sink and gives you a flick of the head as if to say, “Go upstairs to see if he’s alright. And no, I’m never growing my armpit hair.” If only you had a video baby monitor.

Summer Baby’s Quiet Sounds Video Monitor
(£84.99 from Mothercare)

Yes this is (relatively) cheap, but the camera is only black and white and the monitor is an old-fashioned CRT. Man has walked on the moon, the Berlin wall has fallen, Dr Who is on his 11^th incarnation, and we now have colour cameras and LCD screens. This is an embarrassment of a baby monitor that only a time-warped hermit should consider buying.

Safety 1st High Clarity Colour Digital Video Monitor
(£149.99 from Kiddicare)

Now this is more like it. A full colour baby monitor with a hand-held colour LCD screen receiver. The camera also has infrared LEDs that invisibly light up your baby’s nursery during the night and allow you a clear view of him straining out his midnight poo. My only gripes are that the screen is pretty tiny and you can’t hook the camera up to the Internet. Why would you want to do that? Well…

Y-Cam Knight Wireless IP Security Camera
(£154.99 from CMaC)

Be aroused. Be very aroused. This is the video monitor of your dreams. Primarily sold for CCTV applications, this is the kind of high tech dadgetary you may not have realised that you needed, but you soon will.

The Y-Cam Knight is a standalone colour camera, with infrared night vision, that connects to your home wireless network to allow you to view the camera from your laptop. Did I also mention that you can view it from your iPhone? Did I also mention that grandparents can securely log in and view it over the Internet? Did I also mention that you can move it to your hairy-armpitted Swedish au-pair’s bedroom when your baby has grown up?

Needless to say, I’ve bought one of these fine fellows from the good people at CMaC and I’ll provide a full review here shortly. (Full review now here)