Skip to main content

Dartwood 2K QHD USB Webcam with Built-in Microphone


 
consumer technology, webcam

 
There are few reviews about this product across the web - Target has the most, and the "company's" own site has none. Makes me think this is sold under various names. It was less expensive than the initial webcam I was looking at and easily returnable. Does the low price pay off?


Let's Have A Closer Look At...


Camera Quality

The Dartwood's resolution is 1920 x 1080 and 2560 x 1440 for video and camera. 

My internal Realtek resolution is 640 x 480 - A 0.307 Megapixel camera. At that poor resolution, why even put it in the machine. I sold phones with better cameras in them in 2013!

 Want an example of how that old camera operated? Click here.

 This Dartwood is not heavy, but I won't keep this on my laptop all of the time;  Fellow Adventurers will be happy to know it did not jostle from my laptop while outside in a spring wind.

For a time, when I unplugged it, Firefox reacted poorly. Intermittent freezing, slow response in the browser. In an odd, roundabout kind of way, an unrelated Firefox add-on that was causing problems may have contributed to that initial issue.

Despite bragging about an easy setup, plugging it in did not prompt any kind of auto installation of software. Not even the notification that would say "Installing [DEVICE NAME]. Even my settings only called it "Webcam" under "Bluetooth".  It doesn't have an option to eject like a jump (flash) drive would.

After disabling my integrated camera in Device Manager and it's 0.3 megapixel(s), the Dartwood took over.

You can find more exciting things in Device Manager. For instance, right click - properties - Events. You can see when it was configured (plugged in) and see the versions and dates of some drivers. This doesn't seem to have a manufacturer driver, and is using a Windows one that's pretty old. I won't say how old.

 

😶

 

Concerning? Maybe.

The quality is good for a lower-budget camera. There are many more options going up to 30 Fps for video and 3.7 MP for photos, the latter of will give you a very severe fish-eye effect.

The video will lag a touch while recording - Maybe not the best for live interactions  - But the resulting video is smooth and relatively clear. Much better than the integrated camera.

Because the Dartwood is attached by USB, I like picking it off my monitor and pointing it at things - A lot easier than trying to maneuver a heavy device.

The office is painted a slate blue, and somehow the setting of the light gives everything this underwater sea-green atmosphere, which I like.



Built-In Microphone

Here's a little bit of video - It still picks up the lower registers of my voice. I've considered training my voice to sound more feminine, but why? To fit a standard of beauty?

Nah, I'm good.

At first, I thought OBS didn't recognize my non-brand microphone here. Then I remembered - Each time I'm not using the microphone, I disable it. So I had to go enable it again, and all is well.

Speaking of OBS, the webcam will show in preview, but only record a black screen. Documentation shows that many Windows Updates simply aren't compatible with the software, which is a pain.

Zoom Integration

The webcam worked flawlessly with Zoom. The microphone picked up my voice at a low murmur, let alone at my normal volume. The visuals seem to work better with a virtual background also:

Who made this wallpaper? Feel free to let me know.

This is from the Animal Crossing Twitter account. 20 years of AC!

Overall, it works fairly well. Streamers will want to opt for something more permanent, with the potential for higher quality, but for a handful of meetings, you can do a lot worse.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting IoT Devices to a Registration Server (Packet Tracer, Cisco)

In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an intruder, but it is a step. There are no devices associated with this new server; In an earlier lab (not shown), I attached them to 'H
Post a Comment
Read more

Securing Terraform and You Part 1 -- rego, Tfsec, and Terrascan

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now  OpenTofu     Sometimes, I write articles even when things don't work. It's about showing a learning process.  Using IaC means consistency, and one thing you don't want to do is have 5 open S3 buckets on AWS that anyone on the internet can reach.  That's where tools such as Terrascan and Tfsec come in, where we can make our own policies and rules to be checked against our code before we init.  As this was contract work, I can't show you the exact code used, but I can tell you that this blog post by Cesar Rodriguez of Cloud Security Musings was quite helpful, as well as this one by Chris Ayers . The issue is using Rego; I found a cool VS Code Extension; Terrascan Rego Editor , as well as several courses on Styra Academy; Policy Authoring and Policy Essentials . The big issue was figuring out how to tell Terrascan to follow a certain policy; I made it, put it in a directory, and ran the program while in that directory
Post a Comment
Read more

Building, Breaking, and Building A CRM with Retool

 I like no- or low-code solutions to things. I've often wanted to simply push a button or move some GUI around and have the code implement itself.  I've thought about building something that's like a customer relationship management (CRM) system for keeping up with my network better than my little spreadsheet where I click links and then go like something. The general idea in this CRM Development is:  To have a GUI to add people to a NRM (Network Relationship Management).       Attach it to a database (MySQL is what I went with eventually using Amazon Relational Database service, but you can use PostGRES, and probably others).     Make sure components are connected to each other in the retool interface. This video is a good start. Watching the tutorial video, heard some SQL commands and went 'Oh no 😳" before going "Wait I know basic SQL", which is good, because you'll see.  When you get set up, there's a plethora of resources you can use -- Incl
Post a Comment
Read more