Colorado Video’s Observer IV GSM, GPRS, Remote, Mobile Wireless, Internet Snapshot camera enables you to get pictures from remote sites and locations with maximum ease. Its simple installation makes it ideal for monitoring temporary or distant sites or mobile assets. The Observer IV is well suited for monitoring current pictures from mobile assets such as ferryboats, dredges, busses, railcars, and trucks, and for monitoring work progress. The Observer IV can keep web pages fresh by providing continuously updated JPG images to your server for your web surfing audience to view.

Observer will send pictures when scheduled, triggered, or commanded.

Observer has a built-in scheduler that you can set during your initial configuration of the camera. It allows you to set a picture-taking schedule by day of week, and time of day down to the quarter hour.

You can also trigger Observer to take and send a picture by external trigger. The triggering device needs to provide a contact closure to Observer. Triggers can include motion sensors, reed switches, etc.

You can send Observer a text message command to take and send pictures as rapidly as possible and, when satisfied, another message to stop. Observer must be in its always "ON" mode in order to receive the commands. You can see a current picture whenever desired by using this feature.

Observer is not a night vision or Infrared camera. However, there are some solutions available.

Observer has an output to control external lighting. Observer can turn on illumination if required, acquire an image, and shut the illumination back off. This is not covert, anyone present will know they've been "observed".

All electronic cameras use Infrared filters in front of their image sensors. Observer's Infrared sensitivity can be increased by removing this filter. The drawback is that daytime colors will appear washed-out because of the additional brightness caused by undesirable infrared reaching the sensor. With the filter removed, Observer can activate and take advantage of IR illumination at night while it is acquiring a picture. IR LED arrays can be effective for distances of up to 100 feet and are invisible to anyone present.

If it's already present, conventional street lighting is adequate for Observer.

Observer IV is a camera and as such provides no means for connecting other cameras.

First, connect Observer to your computer using a 9-pin RS-232 cable. Then download and run this wizard which will help you make a "dial-up" connection to Observer using this cable. Type http://10.1.1.1 into your browser's address bar. Observer will serve you a series of web pages to take you through the setup procss.

There are (at least) three ways that you can automatically store pictures from Observer.

Colorado Video's FTPJPG Reader software can be configured to archive pictures as your computer receives them. Pictures are automatically stored in camera-specific folders on the computer where you're running FTPJPG Reader. Here's how.

During your initial configuration of Observer, you can select "Constant Name" or "Time/Date Stamp" for the "Picture File Name" given by Observer to each picture file before it's transmitted. If you select "Constant Name", your FTP server will replace each old picture with a new picture as it's received. If you select "Time/Date Stamp", old pictures will not be overwritten. Instead, a new picture file will be added to your FTP account's folder on the server each time it receives a picture. You can review and manage the pictures using a browser or FTP client software like Filezilla.

Besides FTP, Observer can also use email to send pictures. You can review, archive, and manage email from Observer just like email from anyone else.

Yes.

But you need to be sure that your cellular carrier is providing GPRS data service for your cellular account.