$5 Thrift Store Find: Axis 200+

gmaster1

Pulling my weight
May 8, 2015
137
111
Nice to glance back at the roots every now and again. This was one of the world's first network cameras as we see them today. The world's first IP camera was the Axis 200 model, released in 1996. This is a variant of that model. Their documentation says this was the first, but it's either between this one or the 200. Either way, they have pretty much the same specs.

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Unboxing. Appears to be brand new.

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Some helpful info clarifying what it is you just bought. I'd imagine back in the late 90's this wasn't really that intuitive.

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What looks like an AOL CD accompanying the manual.

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I wonder how much this unit originally went for. Packaged well.

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Here's everything you get. The base hardware is about the most heavy duty metal I've come across.

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A quick look at the ports.

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It takes about two minutes to fully boot up. Static IP and then randomly froze up and had to be power cycled after it attempted to grab DHCP automatically.

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Firmware is from Oct of 1999 -- 17 years old.

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Here's the real-time window. Approximately one frame per second with a few bouts of two second lag here and there. The "1X" feature simply made the image larger in the browser.

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This is an actual grab from the camera. According to the cam, this is natural resolution. That's about as clean as I could focus it, too.

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There was a feature called "Hugefile" -- This is apparently a software render that gets applied to a single snapshot of a significantly larger size. This photo is that direct download. It says in the web interface this image can take up to 18 seconds to produce... it wasn't joking.

So there ya have it. A little slice of what these cams were like about 20 years ago. :)
 
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heh, I cant find the original MSRP of that easily online.. was probably one of those; if you have to ask you cant afford it... for $5, neato
 
It'd be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison of video quality between that and, say, a $30 IMX322 camera from today. I bet IP cameras have roughly followed Moore's Law in perceived image quality since then, although improvements seem to drag for enthusiasts waiting for 1" lensed low-light WunderCams available on AliExpress for $50.
 
Thieves that run the banks cost them and us more money than bankrobbers ever could so the FDIC won't care much. Good footage is basically more important for teller safety by cutting down on repeat robberies.