WiFi Video Camera

[dicion]

Only the wiring. Cat-5 specs out to 100 meters maximum between devices. Added expense and difficulty of installation. It's a wireless world these days.

100 meters is the spec'd limit, yes, but I guarantee you from personal experience it'll do more, unless you're running it in EMT alongside power or something

Also, depending on how you would want to lay it out, perhaps using fiber would work? You can get some multimode transceivers for not too much, and convert copper to fiber, and go up to a few miles easily.

If it really is just wiring thats the issue, why not ask on the forums here if anyone's willing to help out? Maybe someone will be willing to do it for really cheap, or something. Never know unless you ask :)

Also, if you switch to wired cameras, you don't have to go IP, you can do standard CCTV Cameras over RG59, which will do some long runs as well.

[jimlongley]

What is it that makes a wired system impractical?

Can we just go with wireless being part of the technical specs? If not, pretend I rent the house and my lease prohibits drilling holes in exterior walls.

Exterior walls is a limitation that is easy to get around, but if it's part of the technical specs, then I am not bidding on the job, wired is more secure and not subject to a whole spectrum of interference problems.

[dicion]

What is it that makes a wired system impractical?

Can we just go with wireless being part of the technical specs? If not, pretend I rent the house and my lease prohibits drilling holes in exterior walls.

Exterior walls is a limitation that is easy to get around, but if it's part of the technical specs, then I am not bidding on the job, wired is more secure and not subject to a whole spectrum of interference problems.

Also, wireless makes motion-activated recording give a lot of false positives, as any degradation of signal will cause it to detect 'motion'

[92f-fan]

The way I see it unless you are using battery operated cameras you need either power or network to the location for your camera - or both.
Assuming you have to run cable - (power or network)
I would get a Power over Ethernet camera

If you have to run wire you can run one wire - cat5 or cat 6 and get a POE camera and be done.
40 bucks worth of tools will get you the crimper you need to make your own cables - the crimper will have the wiring spec on it - just line up the color codes
Get an Ez cripmer and it makes it nearly fool proof
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;♦

And mishandling cat5 wont kill you like mishandling 120 v AC

If you cant put a hole in the walls of the rental - how will you attach the camera ?

[jimlongley]

The way I see it unless you are using battery operated cameras you need either power or network to the location for your camera - or both.
Assuming you have to run cable - (power or network)
I would get a Power over Ethernet camera. . . .

If you cant put a hole in the walls of the rental - how will you attach the camera ?

Plus there are ALWAYS penetrations that can be used.

Also, wireless makes motion-activated recording give a lot of false positives, as any degradation of signal will cause it to detect 'motion'

That was one of the issues with my friend's system. All hooked up and ready to go, as we tried to bring up the cameras, the first one came up fine, and then the second one was not coming up so well, until we turned the first one off - the automated software was trying to recognize camera #1 again while it tried to acquire #2 - so we turned off all the other cameras as we added each subsequent one. Got everything up and running, and then kept getting false motion detections, even when we set the sensitivity way down.

And then the phone rang.

And all of the cameras either shut down or detected motion that was not there.

And then she noticed that her wireless network was not functioning, and when we turned it back up, all of the cameras began showing pixellation and "sparklies" as her son called it, and were not able to stop it without shutting down various other wireless devices.

Having worked in wireless almost literally since childhood, as a ham operator and professionally, I see wireless as a solution in search of a problem. There is only just so much spectrum available and all of the spread spectrum and frequency hopping schemes ever designed suffer from that problem, when there is a signal on a specific frequency, no other signal can be there, and the more information a transmitter is putting on a frequency, the wider the bandwidth, and the wider the bandwidth, the less there is available for any other device, and if two devices try to share bandwidth, even if not on the same center frequencies, then both will suffer reduced throughput.

I always wire if possible, and have rarely found it impossible, including my friend's house, where I only had to drill one hole outside the house, and fish the computer room wall.

[tacticool]

If you cant put a hole in the walls of the rental - how will you attach the camera ?

Posted on the first page.

I have to mount the camera on the fence or a tree to get a good view down the driveway.

[tacticool]

It looks like consumer grade security cameras (under $100) don't have the resolution to read license plates at useful distances. Second, some responses say wireless cameras are almost as useless as .380 pistols. So, while I'm waiting for technology to improve, is there any reason I shouldn't get a cheap cam from HK like this or this until then?