Battery operated outdoor security camera question...

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Hello,

Does anybody know of a brand of wireless ( battery operated ) security cameras that can be installed without the use of a IPhone, etc. I want to connect a couple of outdoor security cameras by using a computer to install them. Is this possible, or do all cameras need an APP downloaded using an IPhone, etc. to get them to function?

Thanks for any advice and my apologies if I posted this in the incorrect forum.
 

wittaj

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You will not find many here that will recommend a wireless battery operated camera, especially if you want "security".

If it is just for nature watching, then maybe ok, but if you plan to use them to catch perps, forget about it...

Cameras connected to Wifi 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 system. And then any distance will slow the speed even more.

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. 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 wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

Now people will argue about the arlos are wifi and battery operated. The arlos "work" because they are not 24/7 streaming. They only transmit when you open the app or there is motion. And they do even more compression on that data to pass it along. But we have seen people come here to replace their arlos after they had some perps and the cameras missed them completely.

My neighbors arlos missed a perp going thru his car and the camera was within 10 feet of the camera. My other neighbor missed it because they batteries were dead. After the initial hang em up in 10 minutes, the constant having to pull them down to recharge and people just quit doing it.

Not ideal, but consider using a powerline adapter that transmits data over your electric lines. Will get a little expensive depending on how many cameras, but it will beat a wifi all day long. Many here, including myself, use them and they work very well.
 
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