Unable to sleep soundly because of the lingering fear that someone’s rummaging around your living room? Logitech’s newest surveillance gizmo, the 750n Indoor Master System, should ease your worries, since it adds 130-degree night vision and illuminates whatever’s lurking in the darkness at a distance of up to 50 feet. Like Logitech’s older products, such as the Alert Master, the 750n records video at 960 x 720p, and it uses the same HomePlug adapter for installation. If you’re already feeding your paranoia with a Logitech Alert Master, you can upgrade to the night-vision capabilities with the 700n Indoor Add-On Camera. The products cost $300 and $230, respectively, and will be available before the end of the month, but you can join us after the break for our impressions.

 

 

The setup here is much the same as it was before. For $300 you get yourself the kit with a single camera and a pair of HomePlug powerline Ethernet adapters, which enable you to position your camera anywhere that you have power. The camera takes power and sends data through one of the adapters, while the second adapter sends that data to your network router of choice. Internally the camera has a 2GB microSD card to which it records, but by running the included software you can suck that footage down and archive nighttime prowler antics for posterity.

 

Apple users aren’t totally left out, as there are mobile apps for Android and iOS that enable the streaming of live footage from your cameras, and you can stream on the web as well. Pay an extra $79.95 a year to join the Mobile Commander club and you’ll gain DVR-like functionality from afar, too. Again, none of this is significantly different than what was available before, it’s just the IR night vision that’s new, and it is quite effective. We installed a camera in a crawlspace, the darkest spot we could find, and it delivered crystal clear black and white footage of the murky darkness with the IR system enabled, as you can see in the slightly creepy photo above. (Just for kicks, we also captured a photo of what things look like with the IR system disabled.)

If you weren’t sold on the Alert system before chances are the minor update here won’t push you over the fence. But, the addition of night vision does make these indoor cameras rather more effective than they previously were. Filming your own version of Paranormal Activity just got that much easier.