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Review of Digital Radar

Table of Contents

• Product Specifications
• System Requirements
• Product Description
• What I Liked about the programs.....
• What I didn't like about the programs.....
• Ratings
• Contact information
• Pricing
• Computer system this software was reviewed

Product Specifications

Platform: Macintosh and Windows 95
Media Format: CD

System Requirements:

Product Description

The basic premise of this application is this. Anytime there is movement within the viewing area of the camera, the application notices that and performs the action you have requested. That action can be anything from recording the scene as a still picture, to recording a full lenght movie. You can also have the product do an audible alert be it one of the prerecorded variety or a creation of your own choosing.

This review has taken me a little longer than most due the technically problems I have had with the product. To fill you in here are the details. I decided to test this product on two different machines, one being my work machine a PowerMac 8500/120 and the other being my home machine a Performa 6290CD. Both of these machines experienced one bug and the 8500/120 turned up one other error. The first problem I notice, of which there was no solution, was that the 8500 would not display the monitor window whenever Virtual memory is on. After contacting Connectixs technically support I was informed that the built-in compressor on the 8500 is not capable of displaying an image when virtual memory is on. I was also told that this fact was clearly spelled out in the 8500 ReadMe. After doing some searching for the ReadMe documents that came with the 8500 and also searching my Technicall Info Database of all documentation that comes with the Apple Computers (part of the Support Professional series offered thru Apple) I found no such reference. The closest thing I came to was a not that to improve video capture performance you need to turn Virtual Memory off. I replied to the tech support contact asking that he quote his reference and have yet to hear back from that person on that issue. The Virtual memory issue does not seem to apply to any other platform other than the 8500 series and I confirmed this on my home machine which worked fine with virtual memory on.

After working out the bugs and being aware of the restrictions of my hardware, I have found this tool very usefull. My office at work contains our Macintosh Software CD/Disk software storage and I have been using this package to make sure I know who has borrowed the software. I have also discovered a few other personal entering my office that maybe shoud not have.

The auto Calibration for detecting the motion to active the software works fairly well, but I would say that you have to make sure you are ware of what you have in your camera field of view. During one test I came back the next morning to fine my hard drive filled with many 1-5 minute sequences. After viewing the sequences I initially didn't know why the software had been triggered. If was only after looking at several of the files that I noticed that my blinds were moving ever so slightly. As it turns out, whenever the air conditioner/heating system would come on, the air from the vents in the cieling would be strong enough to may my blinds move. When I calibrated the software with the autocalibration, my blinds were not moving. I fixed this two different way. One, I set my environment system at such a setting that would cause the air flow to come on and then do the auto Clibrate. The other was to manually adjust the settings. What worked for me in the end was a combination of the two to get the optimal settings desired of no false triggers, yet still catching when people entered the room

 

Rating

(Rated on a scale from 1 Dome to 5 Domes. 5 Domes being excellent and 1 Dome being not worthy)

Value for the Money: (4)
Usability: (4)
Installation Ease: (5)
Manual: (2)

Contact information

Connectix
2655 Campus Drive
San Mateo CA 94403

800-950-5880

email: info@connectix.com

URL: http://www.connectix.com

Pricing

Street pricing is ~$29.95

Computer system this software was reviewed.