The many different clones of one IP camera

If you want to buy an IP camera, or have already bought one, and it is a cheap pan/tilt chinese made item, you should probably read this.

After a while of owning any gadget, one usually gets bored with it and wonders if there is a way to make it better. Usually, firmware updates are that way. They fix bugs and add more features for you to play with. Perfect. But you need to be careful with them. There are many different companies that sell very similar IP cameras that may have slightly different components. And if you install one companies firmware onto another companies camera, what you will get is a bricked IP camera. A "bricked" IP camera is one that is as useless as a brick at doing what is supposed to, it may be good as a paper weight however. So if you have one of these, make sure you get the firmware from the company it is actually made by, and not from a company that makes similar looking ones.

Here is an example:

 The camera above is made by a company called "EasyN"
And the one below is made by a company called "Foscam"

See how they look exactly the same? Except the top one has the LED and light sensor in different places.