If you want to see who’s in reception, monitor the car park or keep an eye on the stock room from home you’ll need a lot more than a basic webcam. However, professional CCTV equipment can be expensive, not to mention time-consuming to maintain.

We tested the new Linksys Wireless-G PTZ (Pan/Tilt/Zoom) Internet Camera, and found it to be a flexible and very usable alternative for small businesses looking for an affordable surveillance solution.

The Linksys camera (model number WVC200) is encased in a protective plastic bubble which can either be mounted on the desktop stand provided or fixed to a wall or ceiling. It’s not really rugged enough to be deployed in an exposed location, but would be fine in a lobby or warehouse where it will be protected from the worst of the elements.

Unfortunately, there’s no Power over Ethernet support, which is disappointing, but the WVC200 does have an 802.11b/g wireless interface, so locating the camera shouldn’t be that difficult. We mounted it on a wall in an entry way and simply ran an extension cord through the false ceiling to the AC adapter supplied.

You do have to connect using a cable to configure the basic network settings but that can be done before it’s fixed in situ, and as part of our setup we configured the camera to connect to a WPA-protected wireless access point and were then able to dispense with the fixed wire altogether.

A built-in web server is used to manage the camera with an ActiveX component that can be downloaded on access to view the video stream and remotely pan and tilt the camera, zoom the image and so on. Dynamic DNS support is another key feature and Linksys has bundled a year’s free subscription to its Sololink DDNS service to help simplify remote access.

Image quality isn’t fantastic, but then you wouldn’t expect movie-like results on a device of this nature. Maximum resolution is 640 x 480 pixels at up to 30 frames per second with Mpeg4 or optional Mjpeg encoding. All of which is more than enough for most business applications, enabling you to read car number plates, for example, and follow moving objects over a standard 802.11g link.

A built-in microphone allows for sound monitoring/recording but there’s no speaker so you’ll have to make other arrangements if you want to use the camera to control building entry, for example.

That aside, we were very impressed with the performance. The camera worked exceptionally well in low-light conditions and can also be used with an infra-red light source at night, although you have to provide the IR lighting separately. The pan/tilt/zoom functions worked smoothly, enabling us to monitor a large area with ease. We were also able to set the camera to patrol up to nine preset points or constantly scan across its whole field of view.

Up to 10 named users can connect to the camera at any time with additional software provided to monitor up to nine cameras and make recordings to hard disk. Recordings can be started manually, time-scheduled or triggered when motion is detected and played back using Windows Media Player. You can also set the camera to send out alerts by email, complete with a short video clip when motion is detected.

So, altogether a very comprehensive wireless video surveillance bundle at a price that any small business can afford.