Newbie help with wifi IP camera

[markraynor]

Hi, this is my first post - please be gentle!
I purchased an eBay 'bargain', an outdoor IP camera with PTZ control and WiFi. The model is given as a DBPower VA038K - it looks very impressive and is intended to just keep and eye on my car.
The instructions are awful, a very poor translation from Chinese to English. I have two immediate questions which may well be interlinked.

The documentation lists a website www.gotocamera.com but that website is now closed and appears to be a means of recording and remote viewing the camera output. Not sure. My main problem is that I fail to work out how I do record the output from the camera, and would I have to have a computer permanently switched on to do so?

This probably sounds all very amateurish to you guys but any guidance you can offer would be most appreciated

 

[EightyTwo]

A camera is (usually) just a camera - it takes pictures and sends them to a monitor and/or a recording something. The "something" used to be a VCR video casette recorder, then it was a DVR digital video recorder and now it's an NVR network video recorder.

IP cameras will stream video signals over a network (usually using jpeg or mpeg compression) to the recorder which is sitting on the same network. These days, an NVR is often a PC running the recorder software. The PC may be configured as a server (for lots of fast disc accesses) and could even be running Windows. And, yes, it needs to be switched on if you want it to record.

Your problem is that you have no support from your supplier (I assume...) and so you won't know which NVR package will link to this type of camera. The web site you quote might be some kind of ddns thingy to allow you to view your camera from the internet if you don't have a static IP address at home (but I am guessing a bit ). I guess that it didn't come with a disc... You might be able to find some NVR software that will record the video and use IE or Google Chrome to control the camera.

Good luck - you're probably on your own!