Solar powered wifi IP Camera

J

joeusernumber100

n3wb
May 27, 2020
13
1
Idaho Springs, Colorado
I found some threads on this but most were pretty old.

I'd really like to have a solar powered wifi camera that works with BlueIris.

In anticipation of the questions around why not use POE..... Because I'd like to mount a camera across the busy road from my house, pointing back across the road to my driveway and mailbox. There happens to be a great place to mount it - but i cannot run a wire across the road. It would need to be wireless. I do have great wifi signal in the area.

Has anyone found one that works reasonably well?
 
 
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I mean, its fairly trivial to build out a NEMA enclosure, solar cell, battery, solar charger, inverter, WiFi PtP radio(s), PoE switch, and the camera(s). It will just be a lot of work to put it all together and you need some "know how" to go along with it. You'd have to size the solar cell and battery large enough to handle the power draw of the PoE switch with the amount of cameras it would be running.

Unifi has this: Ubiquiti | Simplifying IT

The problem is the SolarPoint and SolarSwitch don't support regular PoE 802.3af. So you have to use Ubiquity cameras which aren't that good.
 
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It would be a fun project. Assuming that the OP's "great wifi signal" is solid, he can run his single IP camera off 12V DC. I would try that first. Adding PtP radios and PoE switch means more power draw (bigger panel and bigger battery) and more costs.

I kind of wish I had that use case so that I could do this project :).
 
You don't want that. You'd need a PtP Wifi link. One radio/antenna at the camera and then another radio/antenna at your house. That is a wireless bridge connecting the two. UniFi Building-to-Building Bridge

That Reolink camera is junk and not what you want. You don't want to attach the camera directly to your house wifi. The performance would be terrible if it worked at all.
 
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reflection said:
It would be a fun project. Assuming that the OP's "great wifi signal" is solid, he can run his single IP camera off 12V DC. I would try that first. Adding PtP radios and PoE switch means more power draw (bigger panel and bigger battery) and more costs.

I kind of wish I had that use case so that I could do this project :).
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He says its across the road/street from his house. I doubt very much it work, and if it did, you can say goodbye to any throughput on that AP for that channel since the camera would be vying for all the airtime contention. It would drag the entire wireless network down.

I built a NEMA enclosure like what we are talking about about 5 years ago sans the solar stuff and its still running. Its mounted 40' in the air on top of a billboard sign. It has a PoE switch inside it and the switch runs a single Axis camera and a Unifi Nanobeam. The Nanobeam points back to a second Nanobeam (to complete the wireless link) a couple hundred feet away on a building where the inside camera network is located. Been working like a champ in the Florida heat.
 
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biggen said:
He says its across the road/street from his house. I doubt very much it work, and if it did, you can say goodbye to any throughput on that AP for that channel since the camera would be vying for all the airtime contention. It would drag the entire wireless network down.
Click to expand...

I run a couple of cameras that are further away from a wired module on my mesh network than this one would be and have no issues. I can stand under my camera location and get full bars and stream 1080p video with no issues. I tested that first. Wifi would not be my issue.
 
It could work, but I'd bet against it.

All I'm saying is If one is going to design a fairly complicated system like this, there is no point in taking shortcuts at the beginning. I know for a fact that a wireless PtP bridge will work 100%. I design the box and system around that. It would be a pain in the ass to add to it later if you didn't design it to incorporate it in the first place.
 
I too am looking at a solar-powered wireless camera to monitor a clearing out back- I'd like to monitor some animals. You are saying that if this device is on the wireless, constantly using the wireless signal it will use up that bandwidth form other devices? I'd rather not go with the PtP bridge set up- just too complex. Although I will have a solar powered electric fence powered by a 30 watt panel.
 
One of the biggest differences between having a PtP wireless bridge versus an AP to wifi camera is the wifi camera. The PtP bridge will have two endpoints with better antennas and more power. Some use proprietary 802.11 protocols. For an AP to wifi camera, the AP side may be strong with 4x4 MIMO, but the camera wifi would most likely be the weak link. You will have to find a solid wifi camera (hopefully with multiple spatial streams and good antenna).

Doing a PtP bridge is not that hard and I've done it few times. 30W is going to be tight in terms of power budget if you go the bridge route. You will need a battery that will last all night. If wifi signal to your camera is solid and your camera's wifi is solid, and you already have a panel and battery, give the wifi camera a shot and see if it's acceptable.
 
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A decent camera will output a 4Mbps stream. Find the throughput of your wifi at the proposed camera location and you can easily do the math. For instance, at my proposed camera location I measure wifi throughput of about 400Mbps, so yeah, i could theoretically connect 100 cameras to it, and certainly am not worried about connecting one. YMMV, of course - and as reflection said - if the camera itself is the issue then everything changes. I've had good luck with amcrest wifi cameras at long distances from an AP.
 
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