Smallest Rugged IP Camera

svalvasori

svalvasori

Young grasshopper
Oct 8, 2019
38
4
Canada
I'm in need of a small camera for mounting on my boat. I'd like it to be small as possible but also have fairly good image quality. I'd like to see 1080p/30fps minimum, and IR LEDs for night. Wide angle is preferred. I'll be running a Raspberry PI (Linux) for a display monitor, I may/may not run BI on a separate Windows machine that is undecided. I expect to eventually have 4 cameras but initially I'll only have one. The camera's will be used mostly for docking to see area's not viewable from the helm. Oh, and I don't want to spend $500+ per camera, there are lots of "marine" cameras available if I want to do that. I've seen some mini turrets (marine specific) that are ~2.5" x 2.5" footprint but I don't see any for a reasonable price. I run normal turret at home w/BI but it's rather large for a boat project. So I'm really looking for an IP backup camera with good quality image and night vision. It also needs to be outdoor rated and fairly rugged since the boat can pound if the water gets rough. Frankly even a USB camera would work but I've not seen many outdoor USB cameras.
Thanks for any ideas.
 
I you're going to use it for docking you don't want an IP camera. IP has an inherent delay of anything from a second to three seconds. You need CVI, composite video, cameras for purposes like that.
 
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My suggestion would be to try a regular "backup" style camera, and display, used on a car. They're IP65 rated or higher and pretty rugged. They're also CVI so there's no delay. Sorry I didn't mention that earlier, I'm pretty tired and dain bread this evening.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion - I have an IPC-T5442 at home and the quality is great - but like the Armcrest, it's too large for what I want.
The issue I have with the pre-packaged backup cameras is that I believe they require me to use their display. Or if they don't, I still need to figure out how to get CVI into a computer of some sort. My chartplotter has a CVI input so I could use that but might need a switch between cameras - but then I limit it to only being a docking camera and not security. I figured if I have a camera pointing down the dock, I might as well use it for security as well. Perhaps I'm expecting too much for too little. I'm not familiar with the options for getting CVI cameras to talk to say BI on a windows machine, I'll have to look into that. Also I wonder if that even helps because of whatever delay is created by remote viewing BI. Might be best to give up on the security aspect of this idea and just input to the chart plotter directly.
 
Keep in mind that viewing any camera requires bandwidth and significant data. If you talking a cell connection that will limit the amount of data you might be able to use significantly.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Keep in mind that viewing any camera requires bandwidth and significant data. If you talking a cell connection that will limit the amount of data you might be able to use significantly.
Click to expand...
By viewing remotely, I simply mean within the same LAN. My display will be based on a small linux computer that will also display other aspects of boat operation + the camera(s). If I used BI the display would be remote to the BI server, but on the same LAN.
 
Again I urge caution with WIFi connections. One camera will probably experience occasional dropout, two even more, three worse yet and four or more can potentially take your WiFi out of commission on a regular basis. WiFi just isn't design for the constant streams of data that a surveillance camera produces. Couple that with going through a consumer grade router with WIFi, limited backplane capabilities, and things get dicey really quickly.
 
To be clear, everything would be 1Gb/s wired connections, I don't use WIFI for anything I care about. I'm thinking of 3-4 cameras CVI connected to ???? (not sure, perhaps Windows PC) then viewing through a web interface on the helm screen.
 
svalvasori said:
Perhaps something like that (I just installed something very similar for my sister-in-law) -but with specialized small cameras. I've also come across a 4 channel video encorder that might work for my needs.
Click to expand...
Those cameras are smaller than they look. I think hikvision sells even smaller eyeballs. Turbo HD I believe.
 
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