Saturday, November 29, 2025

This “Internet” camera is only 21 years old—it should still work, right? Right?

One of the errands we ran today was stopping by the storage unit to retrieve the Christmas decorations. While there, I saw a box containing a D-Link DCS-900W WiFi-enabled Internet camera. I have no recollection of having ever bought it, nor using it. No clue, but I thought it might be fun to play around with it. How hard could it be?

For starters, you need Windows to configure the device. The CD that came with the device only had two types of files on it—PDFs and Microsoft executables. Undaunted, I figured the device might also some with a web-based interface. Or at least, I hoped it did. Not only did it come with Wi-Fi (and the antenna had definitely seen better days—it was only later when putting it back in the box did it start disintegrating, but I’m getting ahead of myself here), but it came with an Ethernet jack. Easy enough to plug into the “wireless service unit.” Then I just had to find it on the network.

No go. Reading the manual, you can reset the device to factory settings by using a paperclip to hit the rescessed reset button. That’s easy enough. But then I read that the factory setting uses an IP address of 192.168.0.20.

That was going to be a problem.

At some point since this device was made (back in 2004 according to a date in the instruction manual) commerical network devices went from assuming a private network address of 192.168.0.0/24 back in the day to 192.168.1.0/24 in these more englightened times. But I’m not going to renumber my entire network for a camera. Okay, think …

I pulled out of storage a laptop with an Ethernet port, and a small, five port Ethernet switch. It would be easier to set up a small network of three devices. I power up the laptop, log in, and find that the space bar doesn’t work. Every other key works, except for the space bar. Okay, think …

First, I try Deoxit, assuming maybe the spacebar switch has oxidized. That failed. Then I tried using some denatured alcohol to clean the actual contacts. That failed. It was not going to be easy to type commands into the xterm to reconfigure—wait a second! I have an xterm running. There’s a space character on the terminal! I can copy the space character into the clipbard and use that!

It wasn’t pretty, but it meant I could type

ip<paste from clipboard>addr<paste from clipboard>add<paste from clipboard>192.168.0.1<paste from clipboard>dev<paste from clipboard>eth0

and continue on with the increasing weirdness of the situation.

I was correct that one could configure the device from the web. I set it up to obtain an IP address via DHCP so I no longer needed the ad-hoc network and a spacebar-less laptop (this only took three attempts to get correct).

I could now reach it from the normal network, only I never saw a picture. I can’t use the Active-X link because I’m not running Windows (and is Active-X even a thing in 2025? I honestly don’t know). The Java applet didn’t run because I’m not up to date on Java (I don’t use the language for anything) and the links to update it are long gone for my OS. And the static image from just the web doesn’t work because the link the camera generates doesn’t exist on the camera!

Well then … so much for an Internet camera. Back into the box it goes.

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