Kathryn
n3wb
Greetings everyone. We're researching our third-generation camera setup for a very specific application here. Our property is accessed via a very busy county arterial road, where traffic regularly moves 50mph or more. We have the crest of a hill just 100' west of our driveway entrance, and a blind curve 100' east. So we can't see oncoming traffic in either direction. For the last two years, give or take, we've been experimenting with various security camera setups to give us over-the-hill and around-the-curve vision so we can see oncoming traffic.
First we tried the Arlo system, which has battery-operated wireless cameras. The little cameras worked well; we mounted them roughly 250' away from the Arlo base station and still got good strong signals. But the delay time between the cameras receiving the image and then us seeing it on our phone app was sometimes 5 minutes long. The oncoming traffic had come and gone by then, so that didn't do us any good. And if we lost our broadband connection, we were out of luck entirely.
Next we tried a wired system which worked OK. We had to change the placement of one of the cameras, since we couldn't string wires across the road to the best camera placement. Both cameras have decent image and zero lag time when the wiring is in good shape. However after only a year the wiring is already starting to require almost constant repair. Plus we still have the same issue that if the broadband goes down, we're out of luck. That system also gave us a lot of features which we didn't want or need for our purposes.
So for this next iteration, I'm looking at hooking up two IP cameras to send images directly to a tablet, rather than trying to upload/download something via the internet. I know of one person using a system like this, where he combined a webcam, router and tablet. He connected the camera to the tablet via a LAN he created through his router's admin system. That setup is a few years old now and his camera doesn't have the range I need to see several hundred feet down the road. I also don't know if his camera is battery-powered or has a plug in power connection. Regardless, I got to wondering if I could do something like that here. I'd appreciate any recommendations on equipment which will let me focus several hundred feet down the road with weather-resistant, battery-powered webcams, which I can then connect directly to a tablet, so we can see the images from within our vehicles as we're preparing to pull out onto the road. Thanks all.
First we tried the Arlo system, which has battery-operated wireless cameras. The little cameras worked well; we mounted them roughly 250' away from the Arlo base station and still got good strong signals. But the delay time between the cameras receiving the image and then us seeing it on our phone app was sometimes 5 minutes long. The oncoming traffic had come and gone by then, so that didn't do us any good. And if we lost our broadband connection, we were out of luck entirely.
Next we tried a wired system which worked OK. We had to change the placement of one of the cameras, since we couldn't string wires across the road to the best camera placement. Both cameras have decent image and zero lag time when the wiring is in good shape. However after only a year the wiring is already starting to require almost constant repair. Plus we still have the same issue that if the broadband goes down, we're out of luck. That system also gave us a lot of features which we didn't want or need for our purposes.
So for this next iteration, I'm looking at hooking up two IP cameras to send images directly to a tablet, rather than trying to upload/download something via the internet. I know of one person using a system like this, where he combined a webcam, router and tablet. He connected the camera to the tablet via a LAN he created through his router's admin system. That setup is a few years old now and his camera doesn't have the range I need to see several hundred feet down the road. I also don't know if his camera is battery-powered or has a plug in power connection. Regardless, I got to wondering if I could do something like that here. I'd appreciate any recommendations on equipment which will let me focus several hundred feet down the road with weather-resistant, battery-powered webcams, which I can then connect directly to a tablet, so we can see the images from within our vehicles as we're preparing to pull out onto the road. Thanks all.