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There are two ways to power the PVC2300. First, the device is supplied with a 12VDC 1 A power supply. However, more importantly, you can power the camera using IEEE 802.3af PoE (Power over Ethernet). So what's the big deal about PoE? Well, in many environments where you'd want to install a camera, there's often not a nearby power outlet to plug in the wall transformer. For example, cameras mounted high on a wall (overlooking, say, a cash register) or in the ceiling won't have access to power.

Rather than spending hundreds of dollars to have an electrician bring an electrical circuit to the camera location, you can power the camera via PoE. The Ethernet cable carries power along with the data using a "phantom power" technique, similar to that used to power condenser microphones.

The source of the power can be either an 802.3af compliant switch that supplies the PoE, or a PoE power injector. For our tests, we connected the camera directly to a Linksys SRW2008MP switch. The SRW2008MP switch is virtually identical to the SRW2008 previously reviewed except that it is capable of delivering full 802.3af PoE power to all eight ports simultaneously.

On the Inside

The PVC2300 is very easy to disassemble, though there's not really too much to see on the inside. To disassemble it, you merely remove the two small Phillips screws located on either side of the front black lens assembly. The primary reason I took the camera apart was when I first picked it up, I heard something rattling around the inside. (Plus, I wanted to provide interior pictures).

Once open, I found that one of the PCB mounting screws had come loose. I re-fastened the loose screw and shot the pictures below:

Figure 2: PVC2300 Top PCB

Figure 3: PVC2300 Bottom PCB

Figure 4: PVC2300 Rear open view

Linksys declined to specify the processor and amount of memory in the PVC2300, but said that the processor is adequate to power simultaneous dual codecs, and the memory is sufficient for the pre and post capture buffers. The chip I could identify is for the Ethernet interface. It's a Davicom PM9102D single chip Fast Ethernet controller. To achieve the small overall case size, you can see that Linksys used stacked circuit boards that connected to a third board that houses the ¼" progressive 1.4 lux (@ f1.7) CCD sensor.

Tags: Linksys, Network camera,

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