wifi camera for outdoor use

[jslater]

Hi all,

After purchasing a Victure wifi camera to mount on the outside of the garage, only to find out the motion detection gets triggered by rain(!), I thought I'd come here for some advice.

After looking around a bit more, Hikvision seem to be recommended alot, but they only seem to do one wifi camera (DS-2CD2041G1-IDW1), which I can't find anywhere to buy in the UK.

Are wifi cameras then a strict no-no and, if so, what's the best way to get everything hooked up?

There is no ethernet cabling running from my garage to the main house, so I would think the only other option is to use power over ethernet adaptors? Not used them before, so not 100% they would be good for streaming video over.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jslater]

I probably should mention that the garage is less than 5 metres away from my Ubiquiti Amplifi HD mesh network access point.

 

[macman]

If it's only 5 metres away, why not run an ethernet cable to it? Or find a wifi cam with decent motion detection settings. And preferably one which uses infrared heat detection instead of the more common pixel detection.

 

[jsdsamee]

hi
for your problem is easy you can use this type of camera first you need to connect to the camera by using a lan cable connect to your router and power up by an adaptor then you use your web browser to connect the camera where the ip address is hikvision 192.168.1.64 by default you will be able to configured the wifi ap on the browser

 

[jslater]

Hi thanks for the replies.

The reason for going wifi is the room where the router is located is already cluttered with cables, so I don't want to add any more mess as I'm thinking of maybe 3x cameras to mount.

Another option would be to have another network switch out in the garage, attach all cameras to that and then go POE to the router room (still would mean 1x extra cable from mains plug to router, but I'm ok with that).

I can set wifi cameras up easily enough via temporary lan cable, it needed, but going totally wireless/wifi is the best option for me.

The question was really tied to another post on this forum hinting that wifi cameras have problems, but I've yet to find another post to really go into detail as to what those problems might be?

 

[macman]

I use a wi-fi camera because it is 100% wires-free, its rechargeable batteries being constantly charged by a solar panel; but this brilliant technology apart, it is significantly inferior to my POE cams as a CCTV camera. On my 35Mbps wi-fi network, the video feed and all alerts lag the real-time action by about 2 seconds, meaning that many key events have already taken place by the time I see them. So not good for intruder detection and not much good as a video intercom either. And this is a 1080p camera: 4k or higher would be a waste of time and money over my wi-fi.

I am also restricted to a maximum of 15fps which is not a problem most of the time but live or recorded video is always choppy, pausing briefly every couple of seconds. (All the above also applies today when I am using for the first time my new fibre LAN which gives a steady 350Mbps over wi-fi.)

The wi-fi cams that I've played with can't do continuous video. In Live view, I have to keep renewing the connection in order to maintain the feed; and recordings are only of motion events.

The motion detection tools seem to be less sophisticated on wi-fi cams - and many can't be detected by an NVR.

Apart from this, they're great.

 

[jslater]

Ok, that makes alot of sense, thank you for the detailed response. If it doesn't work over 350Mbps, then it's not going to work over mine (even if 4K TV does). I've seen that kind of break-up with the one I've got, but I'd put that down to it being a cheap version.

So wifi cameras are out, and back to POE/small network switch in the garage.

Time for dome camera research time, these seem to be the best for tamper-proofing, at least from the little I've read so far.

 

[Phil]

Turret cameras would be our GoTo recommendation:
Hikivison Turret Cameras ¦ use-IP Ltd

NB
You might wish to consider Powerline adapters to extend your home network to your garage.
Powerline equals networking over your existing mains cabling.

You could then install a Power Over Ethernet switch in the garage.
The POE switch will share that single link back to your router between multiple cameras.
And provide power to the cameras via a single data cable for power and data.

Or, you could actually place your NVR in the garage, it too will power the cameras and be happy to connect back to the home router via a powerline.

If you anticipate that you won't need more than four cameras, then this 4 camera NVR should be fine.

 

[Phil]

This explanatory video might also help:

 

[macman]

I have been testing my options for connecting Hikvision POE cameras to my new gigabit fibre broadband system. With three Linksys Velop tri-band wireless mesh nodes scattered around the place, I'm able to get excellent camera performance without a wired connection to the router. I just connect a camera to a POE switch and then connect the switch via a short length of ethernet cable to the wireless node. Testing a 4MP PTZ camera, I get full and instantaneous responses in iVMS-4200 (I'm not using an NVR). Time will tell whether the performance degrades with 10 cameras hooked up but I can't see any logical reason why it should.

My wi-fi speed varies from 200-300Mbps which gives me new, easier and neater options for camera installations if I position my nodes strategically to be as close as possible to where my cameras will be.