D-Link DCS-2630L Full HD 180-Degree Wi-Fi Camera Review

Software and User Interface

There are mobile apps available for Android, iOS, and Windows devices and you can also connect directly to the camera through a web browser of your choice. On this page, I’ll show a brief introduction to the Android app followed by the entire web-based user interface.

mydlink Lite

There are two versions of the mydlink app, the full version that will cost a little fee, but not much, and the free Lite version that still covers all the basics. You’ll find it in all the big app stores such as Google Play.

Once installed and opened, you’ll be greeted by a little guide that explains the app.

Once through the guide, you have three options: connect to your mydlink cloud account, create a new one, or view local cameras on the same network without the need for an account.

There are a few settings, but not many. You’ll also find a little faq and how to use section, but those require an internet connection.

We, however, want to set up our camera and the app will guide you through that too – both with and without the use of WPS.

Once the network part has been configured, in this case, I used the WPS button on my router and the one on the camera, you’ll be prompted to change the default password to something secure.

If you skipped the mydlink settings earlier, you can still access them from the settings, change them, create a new account, or log in with your existing details.

Selecting a camera from the list will show you the stream right away. In this case, it is black and white because it’s in the middle of the night.

Full-screen mode is also supported on mobile devices, allowing you to see more on the small screens that these gadgets normally have.

There’s still an overlay with buttons when you touch the screen or attached peripheral devices.

The info button will turn on the overlay that shows the current resolution, in this case, the 720p stream to mobile devices, as well as the codec used, frame rate, bit rate, and whether the sound is turned on or off.

Now that we’ve had a look at the Android app, it’s time to take a look at the camera’s own user interface that we can access through our browser by simply entering the camera’s IP address.

Live Video

The live video tab does what it promises, allows you a live view from you camera. You can switch between your pre-defined 3 profiles, set it to full-screen mode, take snapshots and send audio back. There’s also a digital zoom function available.

Setup

Within the Setup pane you’ll find, yes you guessed it, all the settings of the DCS-2630L. The first page contains easy-to-use setup wizards for both the motion detection settings and the internet connection settings.

Moving on to the network settings and we find what we would expect, the rules for the IP settings. The camera supports UPnP for connection over the internet, supports DHCP, and PPPoE.

The Wireless setup page allows you to connect the camera to a network of your choice. You can either manually enter all the settings or you can use the combo box to select a detected network.

If you shouldn’t have a static IP address, and the fewest have, then Dynamic DNS (DDNS) might be a great choice. If you haven’t already set something up in your router, then the camera can handle this part too.

You can control all the image settings from brightness to contrast, select black and white mode, flip it if it should be mounted upside down and much more – all while you got a live view from the camera that shows the changes in near real-time.

You got three video profiles that you can edit. Select frame rate, resolution and bits per second among others. This is also where you can enable the automatic switching between day and night time modes as well as create the audio setup for both microphone and speaker.

Date and time are pretty much self-explanatory and you’ll find all the settings you need here too. You can let it adjust the date and time automatically by syncing with NTP servers or you can set it manually.

If you don’t want to use the SD card slot to store your recordings, or you just want to store more at once than fits onto such a tiny card, then you can email the videos and photos to yourself and you can also let it upload them directly to a storage server via FTP.

The snapshot function works the same way as the video clip function, with the same options.

A camera is a sensitive thing, or rather it can broadcast sensitive images, so you might want to limit who has access to it besides the pure password itself. You can also create IP filters that deny specific systems and allows others.

Depending on from where you access your camera streams, you might also want to change the default HTTP and HTTPS behaviours to HTTPS only, for that extra layer of security against spying eyes.

The SD Recording feature is one of the awesome things in this camera as it allows you to record videos and snapshots without the need for a network connected storage option on top. This can make the overall setup easier and adds another layer of protection if the network connection should fail.

Motion and sound detection can be customized too. For motion detection, you can set the area it has to trigger on as well as the sensitivity.

For sound detection, you can set the detection level. You might want it to go off on small sounds such as the radiator starting, but you will want it to activate if someone cracks your window.

You can also browse the content of the SD card directly as well as format the drive from the user interface.

Maintenance

Besides the camera settings we’ve just seen, the user interface also has a few system settings that you can change. You can change the admin password and add extra users for your family or coworkers if they also need to access the feed without admin privileges. Further down the page, you find the device naming and on-screen display overlay settings.

The System page allows you to create backups and restore settings from previous backups. Just in case.

After the initial setup and when you connect the first time, then you should visit this page first and check for firmware upgrades. In my case, there had been two updates since the camera was manufactured and I naturally started the upgrade right away.

Status

The Status tab has two subpages where the first displays information about the camera and its connection.

The second page for the system log. You can download the entire log to a file or you can clear it – but that’s all the options we have here.

Help

The last tab contains a full help section for the entire configuration interface, all built in and ready for you to explore – that is if you need to.

And then there’s the Acknowledgements page, a boring one, but one that has to be there. And that’s it, that’s the web-based user interface.