On the face of it this webcam from Logitech appears to be very much like all the others on the market and it does a very similar job too, on the face of it that is.

The indoor camera itself is a pretty neat looking thing and has a manually adjustable lens with a viewing angle of about 80°. There are no buttons on the outside and that’s good, because that means there’s less to go horribly wrong. It’s on the inside where Logitech has made a rather mundane item into a gem.

The camera houses a 400MHz processor and a high-­performance digital image sensor. The processor (pretty ­impressive size wise, for a webcam, we might add) encodes video, in real time, into Windows Media Video which can take the size of the file down by up to 200 times. The system is very easy to setup. Logitech claims it will all be set up in 15 minutes, but it took us at least half an hour, as there’s no real instruction book, just a very large foldout chart, hardly user-friendly.

But once you’ve set the system up, which really isn’t very ­difficult to do, it works very well. Key to the functionality of the system is what Logitech calls “HomePlug”. You plug the receiver into any power socket in your house and connect it your PC via USB. You then plug the camera into any other plug in the house, and the two communicate with each other using the ­existing power cabling in your house, cunning we say.

Once all the hardware is up and running you can manage up to 5 cameras using the bundled software called WiLife. You can select a number of viewing modes as well as what type of ­compression you would like for the cameras. Even when you’re not at your own computer you can log onto a dedicated ­Logitech website, using your email address and password and view all your cameras from the site. This is one of the ­stand-out features of the system. Registration is a breeze and once you’re ­connected you can change a host of settings online.

Another great feature is the alert functionality. The WiLife system can send you an sms or email should an unwanted guest go where he or she should not.

The Logitech Indoor Security System has an RRP of R3499 with additional cameras going for R2999 each. Contact Comstar Technologies on 011-314-5812 for more info.