Astak's MOLE IP Camera gets exposed.

Setup -
Setting up the MOLE is actually very quick. Much like other IP cameras and network devices Astak provide software to allow you to quickly setup your MOLE to run on your network.

Click to Enlarge - Opens New Window

Quick and Simple Setup

After the software finds your new MOLE you will be able to easily change the IP address and get it ready for access on your network.

Web UI and Yoics -
The Web UI for the MOLE is not as clean as its out shell would indicate. I was more than a little disappointed at the layout and controls found once I was logged in.  The layout is not that bad but the controls are a little awkward and I was expecting more in terms of event triggers and other security tools.

Starting out on the home page you get a live view of what the camera is looking at.  The action buttons on the left side are very clear in their use as are the controls for moving the MOLE’s view. What is missing though is any type of preset movement except setting a single “home” position.

Clicking on the Media Button gives you the options for the video and captured image quality. The Image page contains general controls for video quality, these affect both captured still images as well as captured video. The video page has settings specific to captured and displayed video.

The advanced tab is where you find settings for [you guessed it] all of the advanced options on the MOLE. The page you are greeted with when you head over here is the network settings page.

The Remote page lets you setup external access using the Yoics service. This service is interesting all on its own and we will talk more about it later.

Click to Enlarge - Opens new Window
Easy Pages

The User page is self-explanatory as is the e-mail page.  The Alarm page allows you to choose the option [or options] you want to use for when the MOLE detects an event that would send it into Alarm.

Other configuration options include remote storage; normally this would be to a connected NAS or possibly an FTP site. However as the MOLE is aimed at social networking you have options for YouTube and Twitter to accompany the single normal FTP option.

The Schedule page is where you setup times for alarms to be active.  You can setup weekly schedule, a work schedule and an all times schedule.  The MOLE’s motion detection page is interesting.

Click to Enlarge - Opens New Window
IE8-W/O Java, IE8-W Java, FF3.5 W Java

The motion capture page will be sure to frustrate many Internet Explorer users. The reason for this is that the overlays for the motion detection areas is not visible in IE8, even if you use compatibility mode.
After trying multiple fixes for this we found that you have to install the Java plug-in for IE to get this working. We even checked to see if using an alternate browser would work. We had limited success as you can see above. In Fire Fox 3.5 we did see the overlay, but were only had access to one of the windows even with the Java Plug-in installed.

Click to Enlarge - Opens New Window

The rest is pretty easy to follow. You can setup an auto capture to send you images one a regular basis [From one to 1440 minutes apart].  The system pages allow you to setup the time source, update firmware [on the initialization page] and also view logs [access and system] as well as information about your MOLE.


Yoics -

Yoics is an online service that allows you to share internal network resources easily over the internet. This service will also frustrate Internet Explorer users that do not have the Java Plug-in installed. The page will simply not work in IE until this is installed. If you are a FireFox user you will also see a few things to raise concerns. The first is the issue with the security certificate on the page that you enter your information to register your MOLE IP camera. This shows up in both IE and FireFox.

After you get by that you can setup and register your camera for access through Yoics servers.  The problem is that you only get 30 days of service before you need to pay $24.99/year to maintain what is possibly an insecure service.

With Yoics you can also share your camera with people you chose.  

Now the reason for Yoics is that you can “easily” share this camera with others and also access it across the internet without the need to connect directly to your home IP address. The service setups up a proxy service to complete this connection. You will need to open a port on your firewall for this though. Otherwise the service will simply stall when trying to send the QuickTime video stream to your system [or iPhone].