Stacy wrote in with the following problem: In the year since I rescued my dog, Page, I've been lucky to work from home. Now I'm going to be working in an office and I want to check in on her in case she gets destructive (she's chewed my bed and stripped my baseboards before). I bought this Panasonic pet cam at Target, but I need help setting it up.
My dog stays upstairs in my room while I'm at work (she's got food, water, her bed and a nice view), but my modem and router are in a room directly one floor down and this camera needs to be connected directly to a router. A wireless model of the camera is available, but I got this one on sale and would like to use it if possible. I have an old Netgear wireless router and was wondering if there is a way to configure it so it could be in my bedroom connected to the pet cam, but drawing Internet from the main router downstairs (wirelessly of course).
Is this possible?
Thanks,
Stacy & Page
Stacy as the owner of a "separation anxiety" afflicted rescue dog. I am not sure how seeing what Page is doing will help you. I just wonder what you will do when (hopefully only if) you see Page freaking out, destroying something, or getting into some sort of danger. I consideried getting a camera but then realized i would spend the entire day watching and obsessing over what my dog was doing. I resorted to doggie daycare, and yes it is costing me a fortune. I wish you luck!
view marid22's profile
Hi marid22, thanks. She's mellowed a lot in past months and I can leave for 3 or 4 hours without any incident. The camera is more to see how she handles me being gone for a longer period of time to assess if I should hire a dog walker.
I got the camera on clearance (see the red sticker in the photo) and haven't opened it yet in case I need to take it back. I just wanted to see if there was a way I could use it since it was so inexpensive.
Unfortunately, the doggie daycare center she has attended a few times in the past, is not at all on the way to my new office. But they're building a location closer to my home right now so that should be open in a few months and I'll happily take her there, but you're so right, it's expensive!
view st@cy's profile
The only work around I can think of is a really long network cord and either run it through some vents or put a hole in the floor.
Have you considered crate training. Our dog loves his crate and goes in there on his own when we are home. When we're ready to go out he hears the snack jar open and runs towards his crate happily.
He's destructive as well, so that's why he is crate trained, for his safety. He has eaten drywall, twice, glass, a leg razor, numerous socks, almost an entire pair of pants. This was all while we're home and he;s out of sight for a few minutes. I can only imagine what he would do by himself while I'm at work all day.
view jmorey's profile
Actually if you are somewhat computer savvy or have a friend who is you can take a router that on sale will usually cost b/w 20-30 bucks and turn it into a wireless bridge. That way you can then connect your webcam to the router and the router will connect wirelessly to your downstairs router. For more info check out
http://lifehacker.com/software/router/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router-178132.php
view wassupdoc's profile
wassupdoc is correct, to a degree. However, that does require that you have the right hardware on both ends and a friend to make it work for you. Basically, you'd be setting up a wired/wireless bridge upstairs to communicate with the wireless/wired network downstairs.
In case you don't, you could take the camera back and get the wireless version, but then you've got to make sure the wireless version will work on your wireless network, that you can get wireless signal up there, etc.... That may or may not work for you as well.
Another potential option is to use something like the Netgear 85 MBPS POWERLINE 4-PORT ETHERNET ADAPTER (model XE104). They have various models which operate at various speeds, and will act as a wired/powerline bridge for you. You can buy them in pairs, so that you can connect the wired network switch downstairs to the powerline network, and then plug in the other powerline network bridge upstairs. Due to the way some houses are wired and the multiple phases that some circuits are on, these also may or may not work for you, or they may have problems communicating because of excessive noise being generated by a nearby refrigerator or fluorescent light, etc....
The real trick is to find a nearby friend who has all of this kind of equipment and can come to your house to try setting it up for you, so that you can find out what works for you.
Myself, I've actually done some combination of all of the above, because the powerline network bridges would work in some parts of the house but not others, I could set up wireless/wired bridges to handle some of the other traffic, etc....
view bradknowles's profile
the easiest thing to do is to throw the cable out of the window (we did it today to connect the computer in the basement to the router on the 2nd!!! floor). For this you only need a lond ethernet cable! (we paid $12 for 100ft)
view Nudik's profile