Hi all. There's probably a better area to post this in, but since you are all such a helpful and knowledgeable bunch, I thought I'd ask here.
So, we want to put security cameras at our tower sites - most of which have electricity, but a few of which are solar only. We want them to be good quality, a good value and to be able to do motion detection and to send those photos to a server at our store.
We'd also prefer to use the same cameras everywhere - so even though there are only a few Solar sites, it'd be good if anyone has real world experience running cameras from solar batteries. That's not 100% imperative... we certainly could run different cameras at different sites - but ideally it'd be good to select a good camera that is also low power usage.
Thanks.
So lets make a realisti cacl for your project.
A medium AP like ePMP Forec 200 Power Consumption 10 W Maximum, 5 W Typical
A good IP cam with soem varifocal lens from HIKVISION to be on teh safe side 3MP Vari-focal IR Bullet Camera with Max. 5.5 W (Max. 7.5 W with IR cut filter on).
So a total of 17,5W per hour. You will need 24 hours of function over teh batteries and at least 5 days of backup sinc eteh worst case scenario is 5 days not sun or very liitly sun light. You will need a total 179AH with a 200Ah@24V battery nad for 2.5 best case scenario of sunlight (in Greece) you might need 2 panels of 180Watt which are big and need stabel positioning, plus cases of cahngers and batteries an so on. So to run even teh smallest cam recording on SD with solar power and make it wireless is a big issue in teh spect of cost and insfrastructure. Imagine that in a suggested plan to a clinet you must ensure that no one will pass and get teh box with batts an dteh pannels also. That mean one more cam to look after teh pannels and consequently more power and thus more batteries an panels.....
Hi. Thanks for the reply.
On the Solar side of things, we are in Canada - so we have to really overbuild the solar & battery side. We have 8 panels @ 260 Watts each (2080 Watts) and we have 8 Solar Batteries. So we will have to over over build the solar I know. :)
So I'm more asking for people's recommendation for the security cameras themselves. We had used a couple of the UBNT cameras a couple years ago but the motion sensing software seemed to get fooled every time a breeze blew a blade of grass, and yet wouldn't always be triggered by a person. BUT maybe that was an old early version or something - maybe they are good now?
I'm also not really concerned about recording video necessarily - the bandwidth requirements are huge for that, but rather mainly just cameras that'll take photos (or a couple/few frame per second video) when motion is detected. IP based and record it's photos/video to a centralized server at our store. With whatever compression to hopefully be able to minimize bandwidth requirements and yet get good enough quality to catch the thieves. :)
I would say Hikvsion for teh cost efefctiveness but if you do wish to have teh efficiency towards fake alrms then your solution shoulb be base on Mobotix. Low power supply, double lens on board analytic and the best of all the MxActivity sensor.
https://www.mobotix.com/other/Products/3D-Motion-Detection
I am regitered mobotix partner and have extensive experience on their use so I totally belive that this is teh solution you are searching for and it is beong testedt thoroughly.
If you wish more info please do not hesitate to ask me.
Thanks
Hello Ninned.
Do you need any more help with the mobotix? have you checked their mx activity feature?