Frustrated with the Wireless IP Cams--Looking for Something that Doesn't Need Internet

[Basspig]

Expanding our existing system, which is a hybrid of Swann DVR with composite cameras installed ten years ago, a couple of wireless ShieldEye cameras and a MoleCam.

Recently, we added wireless doorbell cameras and most recently, two ioGeek wireless cameras at the property line, powered by solar panels and batteries and fed by a UniFi wireless outdoor AP.

We discovered some show stoppers about the four new wireless cameras that use the CloudEdge app. One is that when CloudEdge servers are down, you can't log into your cameras. The other is that when the internet is down, you can't access your cameras.

And the final straw that broke the camel's back was the failure of the UniFi AP sometime around Christmas day.

All of these issues convinced me to return the wireless cameras and the AP, as they are not reliable.

Now that the context it laid out, here's what I'm looking for:

A PoE camera that can be at the end of a 100' run of CAT5 or CAT6 cable and will have a connection to our local router by direct wire, yet is accessible on a Windows PC via IP address and can be viewed in a browser, or perhaps even something like VLC Media player. Secondarily, can be viewed on a tablet via IP Cam Viewer app, which again, uses the IP address of the camera to get a direct feed from the camera, regardless if whether the internet is working or not. (The last storm left us with no internet for 3 weeks. We have frequent outages.)

What products on the market are weatherproof, have decent night vision, at least 1080P resolution, can be powered by Ethernet and can be accessed locally without the internet?

 

[samplenhold]

Welcome to the forum. Please read the Cliff Notes and check out the WIKI. There is a lot of info there for you and most of the questions you have asked are answered there.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Short answer, any of the decent Dahua or Hiksion cameras.

Long answer, look in the Wiki, in the blue bar at the top of the page. Read the material on a computer, not a phone or laptop. Pay attention to securing your network sections.

The current preferred cameras are the Dahua 5442 series, 4MP with a 1/1.8" sensor, and the equivalent from Hikvision called Darkfighter. All are PoE and can be accessed directly through a web GUI or by using free software supplied by either manufacturer.

 

[Basspig]

Hi and thanks for the quick reply. All of that is going to take some time to digest.

I wonder if anyone makes a weatherproof wireless camera that can be powered off a solar panel and not require internet, similar to MoleCam or ShieldEye (both can be accessed from a private LAN, but are not waterproof unfortunately), I would probably consider those, since I'm done opening up walls to run cables.

The challenge is that all the outdoor wireless cams I've been able to find are all Internet based and frequently offline for various unknown reasons. My two ioGeek cameras mysteriously came back on line this morning after two days of "offline" errors. It's obvious I can't rely on them.

It's winter, the ground is frozen, and I can't lay cable and conduit now until spring.

 

[sebastiantombs]

We need a sticky for this question ^^^

Given that a camera with IR for night vision consumes around seven to ten watts at 12 volts, plus additional power for WiFi or an RF link, a camera can be converted to do that assuming you are willing to spend the kind of money it requires. Assume a solar panel with a 200 watt output, a battery with a 50 or 100 amp hour capacity and a solar charger to handle it all properly. You might get away with a little less, or need a little more, depending on the sunlight available in at your specific latitude.

 

[samplenhold]

See this thread:

Mailbox Camera

A few months ago I was taking out the trash and while walking down the driveway I noticed a car stopping at our mailbox, opening it and driving away. It was dark so I know it was not the rural mail carrier. We live in a rural area and have had occasions of missing mail in the past. We don't have...

ipcamtalk.com

and this one:

Livestream camera in the sandhills of Nebraska

The Nebraska sandhills region covers roughly 23,000 square miles . It is a vast region of sparsely populated counties and not too many roads. It lies atop the Ogallala aquifer, the largest fresh water aquifer in the world. In the low lying areas are hundreds of lakes and rivers. 85% of the...

ipcamtalk.com

and this one:

Nebraska Sandhills Windmill IP Camera Upgrade

A few weeks ago I was contracted to upgrade a Vivotek IP PTZ camera that I installed about 6 years ago. The camera looks at a prairie chicken lek and provided live video to a guest lodge a few miles away. At the time the Vivotek was one of the better options out there and it did perform pretty...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Basspig]

We need a sticky for this question ^^^

Given that a camera with IR for night vision consumes around seven to ten watts at 12 volts, plus additional power for WiFi or an RF link, a camera can be converted to do that assuming you are willing to spend the kind of money it requires. Assume a solar panel with a 200 watt output, a battery with a 50 or 100 amp hour capacity and a solar charger to handle it all properly. You might get away with a little less, or need a little more, depending on the sunlight available in at your specific latitude.

The ioGeek cameras never seem to run down their 7000maH lithium ion batteries. They have each a 3 W solar panel feeding the charge port. Even on cloudy days, the panel keeps the battery topped off. The only time one of them dropped to 80% charge was during a heavy snow, which kept the motion sensor on continuously for the night. By the next afternoon, battery level back to 100%. They're fine cameras, but I found I can't log in when the internet is down (frequent occurrance here, or when CloudEdge servers are down). Not being able to access the cameras for hours and sometimes days at a time is unacceptable. I need an offline wireless solution.

 

[Basspig]

For reference, this is the current camera setup. Toe ioGeek solar powered wi-fi cameras. The work about 80-85% of the time, but go "offline" for hours, sometimes days, for no apparent reason.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Do they stream 24/7/365 or only on motion that they detect? I have yet to have a decent PoE camera go offline at all, let alone hours or days.

 

[SouthernYankee]

@Basspig

Do the solar panels charge batteries ? There do not look like any batteries in the picture. The voltage will fluctuate with out a battery ? do the cameras use AC or DC ?

 

[Basspig]

They stream on demand. It sometimes takes 10-15 seconds for the cameras to 'wake' and then I get a picture of realtime images. The cameras also record to SD card when motion detected.
The 3W solar panels actually keep the batteries topped off, even on cloudy days. Batteries are in the camera unit 7000maH.
The weakness of this system is that it is cloud-based. Internet needs to be working and CloudEdge servers in NZ need to be up and running for these cameras to be monitored. There is apparently no way to view them direct over LAN. If CloudEdge goes out of business, the cameras are useless. I did not know this before purchase. It was not disclosed in the marketing.

 

[looney2ns]

Others have pointed you in the right direction.
1-If you want reliability, don't use Wifi for cameras. Any cam can be made wireless by using a Ubiquity nano setup.
2-Don't use anything cloud based, as you have found. They are also a security risk.
3-Run ethernet cable, always.
4-Use POE.
Review-OEM Loryta IPC-T5442T-ZE Varifocal 4mp camera (Dahua) | IP Cam Talk

Expanding our existing system, which is a hybrid of Swann DVR with composite cameras installed ten years ago, a couple of wireless ShieldEye cameras and a MoleCam.

Recently, we added wireless doorbell cameras and most recently, two ioGeek wireless cameras at the property line, powered by solar panels and batteries and fed by a UniFi wireless outdoor AP.

We discovered some show stoppers about the four new wireless cameras that use the CloudEdge app. One is that when CloudEdge servers are down, you can't log into your cameras. The other is that when the internet is down, you can't access your cameras.

And the final straw that broke the camel's back was the failure of the UniFi AP sometime around Christmas day.

All of these issues convinced me to return the wireless cameras and the AP, as they are not reliable.

Now that the context it laid out, here's what I'm looking for:

A PoE camera that can be at the end of a 100' run of CAT5 or CAT6 cable and will have a connection to our local router by direct wire, yet is accessible on a Windows PC via IP address and can be viewed in a browser, or perhaps even something like VLC Media player. Secondarily, can be viewed on a tablet via IP Cam Viewer app, which again, uses the IP address of the camera to get a direct feed from the camera, regardless if whether the internet is working or not. (The last storm left us with no internet for 3 weeks. We have frequent outages.)

What products on the market are weatherproof, have decent night vision, at least 1080P resolution, can be powered by Ethernet and can be accessed locally without the internet?

 

[Basspig]

Running any cables is going to have to wait til spring. Ground is frozen.

My indoor wireless cameras are pretty reliable. I do have to reboot one of them every few months, but otherwise they work well. If they were weatherproof I would set more of them up outdoors and power them from solar and a storage battery.

 

[Basspig]

Cameras were working fine this morning, but both went offline around 4:30 today.
A winter storm is bearing down on us and I really need to get on a ladder and remove these in preparation to return them.
I'm perplexed as to why they are so unreliable. I had nearly 100% WiFi signal to them with an outdoor booster/AP dedicated to the outside devices. I can only assume it's the cloud that's down.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I have posted this before.

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 SSID and 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 find for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
Test do not guess.

Think of the problem as you are in a room with a number of different people talking to you about different subjects all at the same time, If you do not answer then they repeat what they said.

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

You neighborhood and house activity can effect your wifi, the neighbor or you turn on the microwave, Turn on the TV using a wireless connection.

 

[looney2ns]

Running any cables is going to have to wait til spring. Ground is frozen.

My indoor wireless cameras are pretty reliable. I do have to reboot one of them every few months, but otherwise they work well. If they were weatherproof I would set more of them up outdoors and power them from solar and a storage battery.

Cables can lay on top of the ground, until spring.

 

[Basspig]

Just one question considering all this wi-fi discussion: why do my non-cloud based Wifi cameras have nearly 100% uptime, if they are on the same network node as the cameras that go offline for hours or days at a time?

 

[looney2ns]

Just one question considering all this wi-fi discussion: why do my non-cloud based Wifi cameras have nearly 100% uptime, if they are on the same network node as the cameras that go offline for hours or days at a time?

Pure luck of the draw.

 

[samplenhold]

why do my non-cloud based Wifi cameras have nearly 100% uptime, if they are on the same network node as the cameras that go offline for hours or days at a time?

Are they streaming or running on motion only? Really it is next to impossible to answer your question without going to your home and seeing the setup and inspecting the cams.

I have three WIFI cams that are recording continuous. They are crappy little LaView baby monitor type cams that I got when I first started this venture. They go offline for a few seconds multiple times a day, or just a few times a week. One, while it goes offline fairly often, it never stays offline for more than a couple of minutes. The other two will go offline and stay that way sometimes and have to have the power cycled.