Camera recommendations for long distance locations

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#1

I’m looking for recommendations on video cameras that won’t break the bank to be located up to 400 ft away from WiFi router/Vera controller. We have a small farm and I’d like to be able to set up camera to monitor some blind spots I can’t see from the house.

The biggest issues are:

  1. Getting power to the locations
    a) I believe WiFi IP camera with PoE would be the easiest. It would allow me to place the camera where I need it and simply run an ethernet cable to a power outlet.
  2. WiFi signal
    a) This one is more difficult. I use a Comcast WiFi box located in the center of my basement. I’ve tried WiFi extenders in the past and only had networking issues. Any recommendations?
  3. Once installed, they need to be able to be remotely reset as needed (i.e., w/o climbing ladder)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

#2

Is the power in the out building run off of the same power service as the house…with no transformers in between?

If so…I’d use a powerline adapter to get out there.

Then put a POE injector on it

Call it done.

Pick whatever poe camera suits your fancy as long as it is within the power pudget of the POE injector you pick up. Getting a powerline adapter with POE built in has been traditionally much more expensive.

#3

[quote=“meystad, post:1, topic:198626”]I’m looking for recommendations on video cameras that won’t break the bank to be located up to 400 ft away from WiFi router/Vera controller.
The biggest issues are:

  1. Getting power to the locations
    a) I believe WiFi IP camera with PoE would be the easiest. It would allow me to place the camera where I need it and simply run an ethernet cable to a power outlet.
  2. WiFi signal
    a) This one is more difficult. I use a Comcast WiFi box located in the center of my basement. I’ve tried WiFi extenders in the past and only had networking issues. [/quote]

If it were me I would trench fiber to those remote locations. While this may sound expensive, if you do it yourself it wouldn’t be too much. And it would just work. The only issue is how to dig the trench…

#4

If you can’t use a power line adapter as previously suggested, can you run any wire to it? I ran Cat 6a wire that was outdoor rated to 3 POE cams with great success. I didn’t trench mine in, but this was an option. Make sure to buy Cat cable that can be directly trenched to save time. It doesn’t need to be deep. Think of running Coax cable from a satellite dish to your house. A few inches down is all that’s needed.

The cable isn’t cheap, so shop around. You’ll likely need to order it online because most hardware stores won’t carry what you need.

Good luck and let us know what you go with and your results.

Sent from my LGUS992 using Tapatalk

#5

Ok, I got that. Now how about a camera? The ones on the Vera website seem expensive. But, on Amazon they range from 4 cameras for $100 to $1500 a piece.

I’ve been checking the apps ratings, as well as, reviews of the the cameras. I cannot seem to find one camera that has good quality and a decent app.

#6

[quote=“meystad, post:5, topic:198626”]Ok, I got that. Now how about a camera? The ones on the Vera website seem expensive. But, on Amazon they range from 4 cameras for $100 to $1500 a piece.

I’ve been checking the apps ratings, as well as, reviews of the the cameras. I cannot seem to find one camera that has good quality and a decent app.[/quote]

If you want to record on motion, I’d recommend using software like Blue Iris. It allows a ton of different camera brands to run together in a clean interface with good phone apps. I tried to rely on the software of my Amcrest cams and hated it. Others here may have camera suggestions that have better included software.

#7

[quote=“meystad, post:5, topic:198626”]Ok, I got that. Now how about a camera? The ones on the Vera website seem expensive. But, on Amazon they range from 4 cameras for $100 to $1500 a piece.

I’ve been checking the apps ratings, as well as, reviews of the the cameras. I cannot seem to find one camera that has good quality and a decent app.[/quote]

Okay… now tell us abotu the space you are trying to capture and how you want to capture it. I’ll list a few questions here, but they are not all inclusive to neccesarily cover everything. Just describe what you have, or pictures of what you have and I can help you find something that fits.

[ul][li]Are you putting the camera indoors, outdoors, outdoors under cover?
[/li]
[li]Will a fixed camera, or multiple fixed cameras okay? PTZ will be more expensive per camera and I prefer to do multiple fixed in a general surveillance situation.
[/li]
[li]From the point you wish to mount them, can you approximate the field of view? Take 2 sticks, or two pieces of rope, or something long and straight. Make a V shape with the point under where you want the camera and the two sides pointing to the edges of what you want to cover. For reference, a lot of fixed cameras have a 90? or so coverage, some I use have 120? coverage, some are more zoomed in and will have a 40? coverage.
[/li]
[li]How far away is the object you wish to see? If you are just wanting to cover for people walking up to your building, then a wider angle is better, if you are looking at your truck parked 70’ feet away, a narrower lens will be more appropriate.
[/li]
[li]Do you have low light requirements? Are there lights where you will be putting this that are on all the time or will you need the camera to have low light capabilities?
[/li]
[li]Do you have a hard budget limit? Whats the most you can consider reasonable per camera in this system to have an idea of where your budget is? I’ve seen people that cant spend more than $50/camera and I’ve seen people that don’t blink at $2,000/camera. Everyone’s situation is different. Dont forget there will be DVR/NVR costs if you dont already own the equipment.
[/li][/ul]

Thats a start, let see what you’ve got to help you figure out the camera(s)

#8

Answer to your questions:

-The camera(s) will go outdoors. One might be under cover, the other will not.

-Probably a couple of fixed cameras would work.

-Here’s the situation. We have a small (5 acre) horse farm in a relatively urban area. We give away the horse manure by posting it on Craigslist & Nextdoor. So we have a fair amount of people accessing our property. The manure pile is on the far side of the barn from the house, so it’s in a blind spot. In addition, I keep some implements in the general vicinity (also in a blind spot), so I’d like to monitor people coming and going. The WiFi Router is located in the basement of our house which is 150’ from the barn. Power for the barn comes from the house, so I can probably use the suggestions above to get power to the camera & internet to the barn. From where I’d locate one of the cameras to the area I’d like to monitor is another 100’. It would need a larger than 90[sup]0[/sup] angle to get all of what I’d like to monitor. The other will look straight down the road, so it should catch both the coming and going of the vehicles (i.e, front and rear).

  • There are no lights on that side of the barn.

  • My budget is as little as possible to accomplish what I need. I doubt I’d need a DVR/NVR if the camera had an SD card. I’m thinking I’d like to stay under a $500 for 2 cameras and the other equipment I’ll need.

Update: I’m looking at Reolink RLC-423 ($220) for the manure/implement application and the Reolink RLC-410S ($120), for the road application. Use Blue ($30) Iris to view. By the time I add in Powerline adapter and POE Injector I should still be under $500.

#9

I have a number of goats at a distance of about 100m that I supervise the following way.

I do have AC electricity in the stable about 50m away. Useful for all kinds of things, so if you don’t have that yet, invest in it.
And if you have to dig it in, make sure you put a network cable in as well. I don’t have a network cable to the stable, so I use part wifi.

Inside my house I have the router and gateway. I use a RJ45 network cable to an outdoor wifi access point (AP) (Sitecom WLX-2100). This provides wifi in my garden, and reaches to the stable.

In the stable I have a wifi range extender (RE) (also a Sitecom WLX-2100), which extends the signal that it picks up from the outdoor AP. This extended signal covers all of my meadows. (No obstructions there)

In the stables and the meadow I operate five cameras to keep an eye on everything. I use outdoor cameras (Foscam HD cameras, any type will do.)

The AP and RE both have a fixed IP. The AP is on the same network as my house, but the RE also serves as a router, so the cameras are on a different network, and port forwarding is required on the RE. Also, each camera must be configured to use a different port for admin and video streaming. This is a bit tricky to set up because this is not described in the standard manuals.

Don’t forget to change admin passwords on any device, especially outdoors, otherwise people can just see on the sticker on the device what the default password is and you would compromise security.

I use a Vera Plus to view the cameras (and also the OWLR app for iOS). Here I have to enter the RE static IP address as the camera address, and the correct port for each camera.

Outdoor systems are not always reliable and sometimes failures occur. I use Neo Coolcam z-wave plugs so I can restart the AP and/or RE and/or cameras. The distance to the stable is too large, so with one plug close to the house I switch everything at the same time in the stable, but that’s OK, it’s a full restart of everything. Takes a minute and everything works again.

Because I can access the Vera controller remotely, I can keep an eye on everything remotely as well. You can use it in scenes as well. (You can sense the camera admin page using a plugin, and if it fails, you can restart everything by operating the plug, e.g.)

Hope this info is useful.

#10

If you have proper main power cables between locations powerline communication (PLC) adapters work nicely. These are also called Homeplug AVs.
PLC uses the electrical cable for network communication and should work over distances execeeding 100 meters. Extension cords do not work well with PLC, it requires proper electrical cables.

I’m using a TP-Link PLC-set with integrated WiFi AP to connect two buildings at roughly 100 meters apart (connected with underground cable) and can get about 80Mbps connection using AV500 PLC adapters with 100Mbps Ethernet on the adapters.
More than enough for few cameras and great to have extended WiFi coverage near each building. Newer Homeplug AV2 based PLC adapters should be able to increase the connect speed to about 200Mbps if need be.

This is newer version of the AV500 PLC-WiFI-set I use : TP-Link TL-WPA4220KIT

If only I could find a PLC adapter with integrated POE injector at reasonable price, those would be very handy for connecting POE cameras.

#11

[quote=“meystad, post:1, topic:198626”]I’m looking for recommendations on video cameras that won’t break the bank to be located up to 400 ft away from WiFi router/Vera controller. We have a small farm and I’d like to be able to set up camera to monitor some blind spots I can’t see from the house.

The biggest issues are:

  1. Getting power to the locations
    a) I believe WiFi IP camera with PoE would be the easiest. It would allow me to place the camera where I need it and simply run an ethernet cable to a power outlet.
  2. WiFi signal
    a) This one is more difficult. I use a Comcast WiFi box located in the center of my basement. I’ve tried WiFi extenders in the past and only had networking issues. Any recommendations?
  3. Once installed, they need to be able to be remotely reset as needed (i.e., w/o climbing ladder)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance![/quote]

I?ve run outdoor cameras up to 2 miles away. The trick is to use a pair of Wireless bridges. I use a pair of ENGENIUS EnStationAC bridges. Dirt cheap and they claim up to 6.5 kilometers range. Most of my installations are under 500 yards. Data throughout obviously gets slower as distance increases, but up to a mile you can still pass 4K video!