Best Wireless camera

[pb11186]

Looking to add a wireless camera or two to monitor my back yard. I don't want run Ethernet. Does dahua make a wireless camera with batteries? I looked around and can't find anything. Curious if I missed something. I don't need to zoom or pan either.


Thanks.

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[TonyR]

Does dahua make a wireless camera with batteries?

No.

FWIW, a good POE cam like a Dahua or Hikvision or even those they OEM for can be made to operate wirelessly with a fairly inexpensive wireless bridge such as made by Ubiquiti, TP-LINK or Engenius but both the cam and the radio will need power; the built-in wireless in a wireless cam has poor receiver sensitivity, low transmit power and insufficient bandwidth.

Too bad you can't run CAT-5e or 6 for POE....you're going to miss out on some good, recommended surveillance cameras.

 

[wittaj]

How do you plan to power it? Use a powerline adapter and run the data thru the existing electric wires of your home. Much better than wifi.

Wifi and cameras do not go together.

There are always ways if you don't want to run an ethernet cable.

You need power anyway, so go with a powerline adapter to run the date over your electric lines or use a nano-station.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel

 

[pb11186]

No.

FWIW, a good POE cam like a Dahua or Hikvision or even those they OEM for can be made to operate wirelessly with a fairly inexpensive wireless bridge such as made by Ubiquiti, TP-LINK or Engenius but both the cam and the radio will need power; the built-in wireless in a wireless cam has poor receiver sensitivity, low transmit power and insufficient bandwidth.

Too bad you can't run CAT-5e or 6 for POE....you're going to miss out on some good, recommended surveillance cameras.

Thanks. I will look into it. Maybe I will attempt. Poe somehow. I have the cam already. Just being lazy I guess since I moved to a new place lol

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[CaptainCrunch]

No.

FWIW, a good POE cam like a Dahua or Hikvision or even those they OEM for can be made to operate wirelessly with a fairly inexpensive wireless bridge such as made by Ubiquiti, TP-LINK or Engenius but both the cam and the radio will need power; the built-in wireless in a wireless cam has poor receiver sensitivity, low transmit power and insufficient bandwidth.

Too bad you can't run CAT-5e or 6 for POE....you're going to miss out on some good, recommended surveillance cameras.

I have a setup sorta similar to this. I have AC power running into an inexpensive ammo can, like the ones from Harbor Freight. The AC splits into 2 plugs. There's a wifi extender and a poe power injector plugged in on the inside of the ammo can. The extender transmits the wifi using an unused ssid so the extender acts as a bridge. And I just run an ethernet cable up to the camera's position. It's worked well so far but the replacement camera will be completely wired. The location is good but I am going to drop the camera down a foot or so and change the location from an overview to a closer range camera.

 

[looney2ns]

I'll pile on, if you expect any sort of reliability from the cam, then don't use Wifi.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

I'll pile on, if you expect any sort of reliability from the cam, then don't use Wifi.

Yes, I do occasionally lose the signal for a few seconds every now and then.

 

[spammenotinoz]

Hi, I have quite a few wired 4k cams with BlueIris, but recently had an event with some new Neighbours.
As a quick stop-gap measure I purchased 4 x RioLink Argus 3 Pro Cameras on sale with Solar Panel more as a deterrent.

To cut a long story short, I will always prefer wired, but have been blown away by their performance and easy of use.
Camera and Panel could be mounted on a Tree\Fence post with a single provided strap!
Used cable ties on another, to mount to the roof of the spa.
In Oz Winter Solstice, they stay at 100%.
They have IR and a Super Bright LED that comes on when motion is detected.
Quality \ detail of 2k seems amazing compared to my Hikvision and Dahua 4ks, primarily as I can mount them closer to the action.
Siren Mode (this is great when activated on all 4 cams at once)

Downsides;

• Not the strongest WiFi, had to move one of my Mesh nodes closer
• Don't always records and no BlueIris Integration
• Cost ~$30 for an annual cloud subscription (AUS seemed to be cheaper than US)
• No FTP recording\only email, FTP has been coming soon for 12 months

 

[biggen]

Hi, I have quite a few wired 4k cams with BlueIris, but recently had an event with some new Neighbours.
As a quick stop-gap measure I purchased 4 x RioLink Argus 3 Pro Cameras on sale with Solar Panel more as a deterrent.

To cut a long story short, I will always prefer wired, but have been blown away by their performance and easy of use.
Camera and Panel could be mounted on a Tree\Fence post with a single provided strap!
Used cable ties on another, to mount to the roof of the spa.
In Oz Winter Solstice, they stay at 100%.
They have IR and a Super Bright LED that comes on when motion is detected.
Quality \ detail of 2k seems amazing compared to my Hikvision and Dahua 4ks, primarily as I can mount them closer to the action.
Siren Mode (this is great when activated on all 4 cams at once)

Downsides;

• Not the strongest WiFi, had to move one of my Mesh nodes closer
• Don't always records and no BlueIris Integration
• Cost ~$30 for an annual cloud subscription (AUS seemed to be cheaper than US)
• No FTP recording\only email, FTP has been coming soon for 12 months

Have you tried to playback motion at night and pause the video during motion to ID a face walking by? I’m betting those shutter settings are wide open and that is the reason it looks better than your Hik and Dahua cams.

 

[spammenotinoz]

Have you tried to playback motion at night and pause the video during motion to ID a face walking by? I’m betting those shutter settings are wide open and that is the reason it looks better than your Hik and Dahua cams.

As I said I still prefer wired, but yes, night playback is one of their strengths, these were deployed as deterrents.

• Portable so closer to the action
• Super bright spotlight, feels 2-3x brighter than the LED on my Hikvision ColorVu cams.

Doubt it would be fast enough to catch license plates, but people walking absolutely.
Mine are all outback, but interested how they would perform with cars (probably poorly due to their wide fov).
Not here to recommend Wireless as the future, but share they were not the garbage I was expecting,.

 

[biggen]

As I said I still prefer wired, but yes, night playback is one of their strengths, these were deployed as deterrents.

• Portable so closer to the action
• Super bright spotlight, feels 2-3x brighter than the LED on my Hikvision ColorVu cams.

Doubt it would be fast enough to catch license plates, but people walking absolutely.
Mine are all outback, but interested how they would perform with cars (probably poorly due to their wide fov).
Not here to recommend Wireless as the future, but share they were not the garbage I was expecting,.

I'm surprised you can get a clear shot of a face at night with no motion blur. Did you tweak the settings on them (shutter, etc..)?

 

[wittaj]

Please post an example of a freeze frame of someone in motion. We have yet to see someone able to post an acceptable night image of a person in motion with a reolink.

 

[CCTVCam]

Not seeing it myself. You must have fluked and got the best cameras in the world.

This is from a video review on Youtube (lifehackster) , note the amount of ambient light from the home, garage and neighbour, as well as the camera's led's:



I haven't got one of these so can't comment on the authenticity, but it looks like a genuine test to me.

Yes it's been YT processed as well, but the moment he walks on he's ghosting through gain and on several points I tried to make a freeze as here, he was blurring. He reports the cameras slowed fps down to 6.56 fps in night colour which suggests probably a slow shutter speed. On Ir the picture was good but not brilliant but at that distance the face was burnt out in my opinion. Obviously not adaptive IR. Further out, pretty good on IR I concede that. Watch the video and come to your own conclusions.

Full video review here: