I finally got tired of the bad IR cutoff on the second generation Wambooli Porchcam. When Foscam put the latest version of their PT Wi-Fi camera on sale, I bought one. The result is the Wambooli PorchCam version 2.1.

Not only is PorchCam version 2.1 much better in color, the device was cheap: I think I picked it up for about a third of the cost of the original PorchCam 2.0. The results are impressive.

Figure 1 illustrates a typical image from the old PorchCam. I swear, that bad InfraRed (IR) cutoff filter made the outdoors appear in monochrome all year long. My lawn looked dead. I hate that.

Figure 1. The Old PorchCam image

Also, the camera started getting worse and worse at night, eventually just showing a black image — unless you rotated the thing to point at my front door. Ugh.

PorchCam 2.1 is a vast improvement, as can be seen from Figure 2. It doesn’t matter that Figure 2 was taken on a sunny day and that Figure 1 was taken when it was overcast. The color differences are obvious.

Figure 2. The new PorchCam image.

To make the update I had to configure the new PorchCam with the same information as the old one. Fortunately, the software controls haven’t changed, so the operation ended up as a hardware. The result is cool; I am most pleased.

For now, the question looms as to what to do with the old camera.

PorchCam 2.0 still works. It still has the useless IR cutoff, so the image looks pallid even indoors. But it’s Wi-Fi, so I can set it up anywhere. If there was something interesting to look at around here, I’d point the camera at it and toss it up on the Internet. But I can’t think of anything or anywhere around here that’s interesting to look at. I mean, even looking out the front porch is kind of banal.

If you have any suggestions, please do let me know.

Oh! For reference, here is the current PorchCam 2.0 image: