What Camera For Home Construction?

I will be building a home later this year. I would like to keep an eye on the build as much as possible, but am not sure what my options are.

It is in a rural location and currently just a piece of dirt. I won’t have an internet until the build is complete. Power is another challenge too. I assume battery power is my only option.

I was originally thinking a hunting trail cam is the best option since it is powered via battery and does not require an internet connection. Downside is that it records to a SD card and will require me to go on site to gather the SD card to review footage.

I am open to all suggestions and options.

If you won't have power or internet then yeah a trail cam is probably your best option. A good one could last at least 6 months on battery if taking photos only, and presumably you would be around more often than that. 2017 Battery Consumption Test - Trail Camera Battery Life

I'd probably just buy two and swap them in and out to make it easier.

I believe you can get trail cams with cellular connectivity if that is an option, however that will probably have a huge impact on battery life and then you'd need to go on site to replace batteries more often.

Hi! Great question! I looked it up couple of years ago, but in the end, I made all my timelapse streams "by hand". Not great and well aligned, but lots of fun! Adobe elements did all the "photo stiching" as I made almost 180° panorama's.

For you, some interesting reading materials I bookmarked back then:
Long Term Time-Lapse: How to Choose the Best Equipment
Time-Lapse Camera Package | Products | Harbortronics

Hope this helps!
CC

Thanks for the replies so far. A person in the same town is currently building a home and just shared they had trespassers on their construction site. They had trail cams set up and the people quickly left once they realized they were on camera.

We break ground in 4 or 5 weeks, trail cake is best option I found.

Short of setting up a solar-powered, cellular-connected system, I think trail cams are a good idea. You won't get immediate notifications, but you can see to some extent "what happened".

Where I used to work, we designed, built, installed, and maintained all sorts of telemetry and control systems for industrial and oilfield as well as mining operations. We did a LOT of solar-powered installations. That can be done without too much difficulty, and if the area has cellular service, that's a decent option for remote alarm system and even camera access. You could get cellular security cameras or cellular trail cameras and power them with a solar-charged battery system if need be.

It depends on how bad you need the "alarm" notifications versus just being able to see what happened after the fact. Remember that you'd need to be able to make a positive identification of the "bad guys" for it to do any good after something happened.

ThomasPI said:

We break ground in 4 or 5 weeks, trail cake is best option I found.

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Remington19 said:

Thanks for the replies so far. A person in the same town is currently building a home and just shared they had trespassers on their construction site. They had trail cams set up and the people quickly left once they realized they were on camera.

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Hi @ThomasPI @Remington19

Remember to plan your ethernet / smarthome cabling - normally this is something you should do early as often the builders will want to properly insulate and waterproof your home.

Do check out the cliff notes as well as review the following video


Please do feel free to share your experiences with cabling and working with your contractors here so others can learn.

Thank you

Thanks, trust me my prewire plan is done and ready to go. Took a good bit of time and a buddy who is an IT engineer helped out.

I cannot attest to any of this unit's performance, just recently saw it in hunting magazine while sitting in chiropractor's office!
CuddeLink Cell