In the Box and Setting Up: Y-Cam CubeHD 1080

The neat and tidy box for the CubeHD is cube shaped and perhaps just a few design cues have been adapted from a certain fruit based technology company.

In the box you get the camera unit itself,  a small stand/wall mount, network cable, power adaptor (UK,US and EU tips), quick start guide,  Ethernet network cable and setup CD (compact size).

The camera is small (65mm x 65mm x 30mm), weighs just 80g (2.8 oz.), stands just taller than a credit card and has a solid plastic construction. 28 infrared LED circle the main lens whilst an activity indicator sits on the bottom left and blinks green to let you know the connectivity status. A light level sensor and microphone also sit on the front of the device.

The back of the device houses the stand connection, power socket, and network adapter. Due to the size of the unit the network interface is USB styled which requires an adapter cable in order to use RJ45 style cables. A microSD card slot sits on one side edge of the camera (microSD card is not included) whilst the opposite side houses a recessed reset button and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button.

The stand is solid and not particularly weighty whilst the armature allows for manual positioning of the camera.

The setup CD is one of those small kind which are next to useless if you use a slot loading mechanism on your laptop or all-in-one. Fortunately, the setup software can be downloaded from the Y-Cam website, and it is quite small in size, so it is not a deal-breaker.

The quick start guide is a very quick start, which is nice to see, and once you start exploring the features you can download the more detailed user guide. The Y-Cam setup program scans a local network for the device and asks for a small amount of information to get started. You can specify a username, location, change the default port and network settings, as you might expect or just accept the defaults to get up and running quickly.

Both PC and Mac are supported and once configured the camera can be accessed using a web browser. Initial configuration requires a wired connection but once completed the device can be switched to wireless mode.