Can the Monitor be configured via HTTP or is that purely to get feedback from the system after it is already configured?

All network devices, one way or another, have a stage during setup and configuration of handling the network configuration. You can't escape it. In order to be able to browse to the device you need to know what the address is for that device. The AKCP securityProbe has a very unusual system. It is set to use DHCP by default and, when you push a button on the back plate, will tell you what the device's IP address is.

For devices that support DHCP by default the easiest way to configure your DHCP server to give out a known IP address to the device's MAC address. That way when the device starts up you know precisely where it will be on your network.