High Quality Wireless Outdoor Cameras?

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n3wb
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Hi Folks,
It has been a quite some time since I was in the market for new outdoor cameras but I wondered if you all might point me a good direction or two for some high quality wireless (I know - this is not ideal to say the least but I don't have the ability to run PoE right now) outdoor cameras.

I would like to put some in my front porch, carport and backyard. I don't have a lot of ground that I need to cover - maybe at most 20 feet or so.

After looking at HikVision and Dahua, it seems like the vast majority of their cameras don't support WiFi anymore?

Any help would be greatly appreciated from you experts.

Thanks very much in advance for your time and assistance.
 

TonyR

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Distance from each proposed camera to a wireless access point?
And is that a 2.4GHz, 5Ghz or both?
Is there any ambient lighting or very dark?
What is your geographic location?
 
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Distance from each proposed camera to a wireless access point?
And is that a 2.4GHz, 5Ghz or both?
Is there any ambient lighting or very dark?
What is your geographic location?
Current cameras are all: DH-SD1A203T-GN-W

Distance from APs: 10-15 feet for all cameras (3 different APs)

AP Bands: Both 2.4GhZ and 5 GhZ

Ambient lighting: I would say it's decent for front yard and carport. Backyard has a light on at all times which creates issues for my camera back there. I live in a city so always some kind of ambient lighting around Previous cameras have done decently in it.

Location: Canada (major city)

Thanks so much once again for your help on this.
 

TonyR

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Consider the TP-LINK Tapo C325WB, perhaps try one as an overview camera. Although it has a large 1/1.79" sensor it has no IR and depends on ambient lighting or its built-in visible white LED's. The exposure settings are automatic and pre-set so blur is highly likely with perp motion at night. But it is outdoor, wired or 2.4GHz wireless, RTSP capable, ONVIF-compliant, 2-way audio, microSD card storage, 2K QHD resolution but is not POE; it is powered by a 9VDC wall-wart.

Overview and Specs tab:

At amazon Canada ==>> here
 

check12

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Thanks so much, @TonyR. Do you think that this is an upgrade based on my current camera? There are no "professional" versions with WiFi that would work better?

I will definitely order one of these to try out based on your suggestion (thanks so much once again) but just wondering if there is anything else that might be a an even better option. I am happy to invest more money into something amazing.

Thanks again for all of your help.
 

TonyR

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Do you think that this is an upgrade based on my current camera?
No, not really.
There are no "professional" versions with WiFi that would work better?
Not that I'm aware of. The alternative would be to use a wireless PtP (point to point) or PtMP (point to multi-point) wireless bridge between each camera and the camera network and I'm quite sure that could work very well but it would be an additional expense but mainly a lot of setup at each camera for powering the radio with a POE injector. It would be a variation hardware-wise of the below diagram. Think of a layer 2 transparent bridge as an Ethernet cable for data but no POE.

Ubiquiti_layer2_bridge-cams.jpg
 
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TonyR

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When compared to typical Wi-Fi, the Ubiquiti wireless bridge (as do others) uses proprietary protocol and transceivers with higher transmitter power and higher receiver sensitivity and a channel width optimized to provide the best throughput and reliability.

You can also choose which band to use which provides the best performance and has less interference in your area, should that be an issue. The 2.4GHz has the best penetration through foliage and walls, the 5GHz provides a higher data rate and throughput but less penetration power, the 60GHz an even higher data rate and throughput but requires a completely clear LOS (Line Of Sight), from what I've read. I've installed only 2.4 and 5 Ubiquiti Nanostations, Locos and AC Locos and some TP-LINK 5GHz bridges as well.

You may consider trying a pair of TP-LINK CPE510 radios in a simple wireless bridge between 1 camera and your network to see how it works. It comes with a 24VDC passive POE injector (not 802.3af/at compliant) so it would need 120VAC at the camera or close by to power the injector. If it works you can add a radio at each camera and re-configure to multi-point, it just depends on what the signal strength is at each camera. You may have to go PtP on more than 1 camera or all cameras, I can't say not knowing the physical layout and wireless quality at each location. The CPE510 is available at amazon, for one.

Also, you may consider a pair of PLA's (Power Line Adapter) between a camera and your network, just insure the device at the camera end is protected from the elements. They work best when plugged into circuits that are on the same leg of 120 (same side of the electrical panel) in a 120/240VAC service.
 
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I can't thank you enough, @TonyR. I sincerely appreciate your very thorough answers. I will be investigating what you are suggesting.

Thanks so much once again - you are amazing.
 

wittaj

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We would also be remiss to any future members that search wifi cameras and find this post to not say the issues that can happen with having all wifi cameras:

Wifi and cameras do not go together. We have a whole thread showing the limitations of wifi cameras, from not being able to keep up with the bandwidth during motion, to missing motion as most are record on motion only, to everything in between.

There are always ways if you don't want to run an ethernet cable.

You need power anyway, so go with a powerline adapter to run the date over your electric lines or use a nano-station.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel



And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams. :cool:
 
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