Wireless Battery Camera (solar)

sebastiantombs

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Simplest solution, albeit expensive solution, is to use a decent camera and power it with your own solar powered system. Figure at least a 200 watt, 24 volt, solar array, two 12 volt batteries in series with at least 100AH capacity each, charge controller, 12 volt regulator to provide 12 volts for the camera and the dedicated, encrypted, wireless link back to your BI system. Throw in weather tight enclosures with proper cooling for the active electronics and add that cooling power overhead to your total power overhead, maybe upsizing the solar array and battery capacity.

There are commercially produced systems like this, but bring your wallet. The problem is a camera draws about 7 watts plus another 3-5 watts for an RF link. Let's say 10 watt per hour total. That's 240 watts per day. A few cloudy days, like a good storm, and you run out of battery.
 
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Hey, not sure if you're still looking, but I just managed to successfully setup Amcrest Smart hub battery camera with Blue Iris. The camera doesn't run continously, but has a motion sensor on it that activates it. I have set it up such that whenever it gets triggered externally, it becomes active, detects motion, and records to disk. You can also manually trigger it from Blue Iris to see a live view of what's going on. Let me know if you need more details.
 
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