Camera suggestions for nature scenery view?

[Bill Burton]

Hello,

I'm looking for suggestions for a suitable camera for a lake view in the woods of Maine. Initially, the usage would be capturing an image every minute or so and displaying it publically on a website. At some point, I may opt to also make available a live video feed if I can find a way to proxy a single camera feed to a public server so multiple people can watch.

Deployment environment:

• The camera location is from 100' to 200' to router/switch.
• Lots of trees and brush between the camera location and the router as this is the back woods of Maine.
• May eventually install as many as 3 or 4 such cameras around the property for different views.
• Trenching and burying Cat 5e cable and conduit through the woods is going to be a pain.
• Cellular cameras are not an option as the coverage is weak or non-existent.

Requirements for PoE based camera:

• Varifocal lens is preferable to tweak the view at installation time.
• Style can be bullet or turret.
• Not considering a PTZ camera as there's lots of trees and brush on either side of the view.
• 4K resolution for still images at least.
• For night vision, there's not much to see across a half-mile of water, so a camera with good low-light capability is more important than good IR or color night vision.
• Optional lens distortion correction feature to eliminate the fisheye effect.

Requirements for a WiFi based camera:

• External solar panel available.
• In addition to motion detection, there should be a timer feature so an image can be returned every 1 to 5 minutes.
• 2K resolution for still images.
• Distance is far enough to the router that I probably need to use some long-range access point mounted outdoors.
• Non-proprietary API, e.g. support HTTP GET to pull an image or SFTP to push images.
• So far, I've not found any battery-powered camera that meets the above criteria. A continuously powered camera might work but there's no power at the camera locations.

Mounting:
In order to test the location, I was going to set up a temporary pole mount 6-8' off the ground to confirm a good location and height. For a PoE solution, I was going to run direct-burial cable on the ground while testing.

Thank you for any suggestions,
-Bill

 

[bp2008]

EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X is an amazing weather cam

I recently purchased an EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X with a 2.8mm lens from @EMPIRETECANDY. This model is also known as Dahua DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED. I installed it not as a security cam, but as a weather cam. The high resolution and large sensor make for great captures both day and night...

ipcamtalk.com

It is not a varifocal lens, so you would need to choose between 2.8mm, 3.6mm, or 6mm when you purchase.

Really the biggest challenge with this will be running the cable.

I like using Ubiquiti's UISP Cable Carrier for long outdoor runs. It is the same stuff as "ToughCable Carrier" (older branding). This picture shows the many layers.




Anyway this should be able to survive for years even if just run along the ground but not buried and even survive the occasional stepping on by a horse or cow.

For direct burial you would probably want something gel-filled instead and then you have a much bigger project ahead of you.

 

[Bill Burton]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write up these camera and cable recommendations!

 

[Bill Burton]

EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X is an amazing weather cam

I recently purchased an EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X with a 2.8mm lens from @EMPIRETECANDY. This model is also known as Dahua DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED. I installed it not as a security cam, but as a weather cam. The high resolution and large sensor make for great captures both day and night...

ipcamtalk.com

It is not a varifocal lens, so you would need to choose between 2.8mm, 3.6mm, or 6mm when you purchase.

Really the biggest challenge with this will be running the cable.

I like using Ubiquiti's UISP Cable Carrier for long outdoor runs. It is the same stuff as "ToughCable Carrier" (older branding). This picture shows the many layers.

View attachment 200347


Anyway this should be able to survive for years even if just run along the ground but not buried and even survive the occasional stepping on by a horse or cow.

For direct burial you would probably want something gel-filled instead and then you have a much bigger project ahead of you.

Based on your recommendation, I purchased an IPC-Color4K-X with 3.6 mm lens from Empire Tech via the Amazon store. As you recommend, I've set it up with the Day and Night profiles where the Night profile has the exposure set to a maximum of 1/3 second and Gain on both profiles is set to a maximum of 100.

After spending some time fiddling with the CGI API using docs someone posted in these forums, I'm able to programmatically switch between Day and Night profiles. However, instead, I opted to use the Schedule feature and manually set the start and end of day in the admin interface.

The nighttime performance of this camera is amazing! Here are a few pics using both the Night and Day profiles.

Full moon using the Night profile, 8:20 PM Eastern/US:


Full moon using the Night profile, 11:30 PM, Eastern/US:

Day profile, 7:05 AM, Eastern US:

Day profile, 5:20 PM, Eastern/US:

One other thing is these images were processed with the ImageMagick software "convert" command which does the following:

1. Corrects for lens barrel distortion so the horizon appears close to level.
2. Rotates the image to make it level as for some reason, I had trouble leveling the camera.
3. Crops the 4K image to 1920x1080 which is the more interesting part of the image.
4. Applies the description and timestamp.

-Bill