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Jabbakam is an inexpensive IP camera that aims to take the pain out of home security. We’ve seen such claims in the past, but all have failed to deliver on the promise. Not so with Jabbakam.
When your camera arrives, it’s simply a case of plugging it into the mains and connecting the 5m-long network cable to your router. There’s no configuration at all, so you can immediately log into your account using the email address and password you entered when ordering the camera. You’ll find video clips already there in your inbox ready to view, download and share.
This supreme ease of use has required a few trade-offs compared to most IP cameras. The video clips don’t actually contain smooth video; they’re a series of still images playing at roughly 1fps. This is more than enough to identify potential thieves or keep tabs on your cat, though.
The good news is that the images are better than average thanks to accurate colours and a fairly wide angle of view. As it’s a basic IP camera, resolution is only 640×480 and there’s no night vision, so it only works when there are lights on.
Another thing to bear in mind is that there’s no way to connect directly to the camera to watch a live video feed. There is a pseudo-live feed available from Jabbakam’s website, which shows images from the camera every couple of seconds. It’s not bad, but it isn’t a patch on a traditional IP camera with smooth video and audio. It’s another trade-off for ease-of-use: data flows only from the camera to Jabbakam’s servers. This avoids the need for users to grapple with port forwarding in their router, but means you have to pay Jabbakam a monthly subscription fee to access your footage since storage and internet bandwidth cost money.
When you order a camera, you sign up to one of Jabbakam’s monitoring bundles. For £6 per month, video clips will be stored for 14 days. For £10, they’re stored for 45 days, but the top £14-per-month package buys you 90 days’ recording storage. Apart from the length of time, there’s no difference between bundles. They all allow unlimited numbers of clips to be recorded and stored, but on every package your images are deleted once the number of days you have paid for has passed. You can download any clips you want to save permanently to your PC, but make sure you do this before the storage time limit is reached for that clip.
By default, the camera is set to capture footage when motion is detected in any part of the frame. We found this effective, but you can adjust sensitivity and even change the area where motion is detected. Again, by default, the camera is scheduled to detect motion at all times, but you can select in the web interface when you want recording to be active. Typically, this will be when you’re out of the house as you’ll otherwise end up with hundreds of clips in your inbox of you and your family going about your daily business.
The alert system works well. You can opt to receive an email when the camera records activity, and also if the camera goes offline for any reason. The only type of alert not included in the monthly charge is text messages. These cost 10p for an SMS and 20p for an MMS, which includes an image from the camera.
You can view clips on just about any device with a web browser, and there are apps for iPhone, iPad, plus Android phones and tablets. There’s room for improvement in these apps, though. The iPhone app, for example, allows you to watch and delete clips, but you can’t alter the recording schedule or configure motion detection. Also, unlike on the website, you can’t filter clips by date or time.
If you’re comfortable with configuring port forwarding, FTP servers and email clients, it’s possible to set up similar monitoring with a standard IP camera and avoid the monthly fee. However, those with less technical ability can use the Jabbakam to easily monitor their home or anything else that’s valuable to them from a web browser wherever they are. For this kind of user, Jabbakam is good value.
