It is that simple. The whole thing is just regular old internet like you use at home.
The camera does video, but at the higher resolution the frame rate is too slow to be called video (4 per second maybe). It will also send you stills which you can refresh as needed. If you want faster video, you can lower the resolution.
There are plenty of other cameras to chose from. This one had the highest resolution at a price I found agreeable. It is a little quirky, but for the $120 I paid for it, I don't think there's anything better. One with optical zoom, and pan and tilt would be awesome. Those get expensive quick.
The camera uses POE mode B which should be 48V or so. However, I called the manufacturer and they told me there was a jumper setting which lets the camera run off of 12 V with the same wiring as mode B. I pulled the linksys router apart and simply soldered the power input jack connections to the appropriated header pins on the RJ45 jacks.
With regular omni antennas 100 yards is no problem. A smartphone would probably be fine with that. The problem with a tablet or smart phone is that the internal wireless card and its antenna are probably not all that great. The Alfa usb dongle blows away any internal card I've ever used in terms of range and allows you to attach an external antenna.
One of the Alfa usb dongles with the 7 dBi panel connecting to a DD-WRT flashed router with the power cranked up and a 10 dBi omni attached gets you to 1k easily.
