A few weeks ago I was contracted to upgrade a Vivotek IP PTZ camera that I installed about 6 years ago. The camera looks at a prairie chicken lek and provided live video to a guest lodge a few miles away. At the time the Vivotek was one of the better options out there and it did perform pretty well over the years. But as you all know, IP camera technology has made great strides in the last few years. Better sensors mean better low light performance and much better video quality. The picture below is the old camera setup. One of the problems with this installation was the height of the camera. This is a working ranch and cattle are frequently rotated into this pasture. The camera was low enough that the cows would lick the dome making a mess of the image quality. Originally the camera was mounted to the windmill. But when the windmill was operating, the vibration made it impossible for the camera to focus on anything. The scene was lit with the two 940nm IR flood lights you can see mounted to the windmill.
The new camera is a Dahua SD49225T-HN 2mp 25x zoom with IR. This camera I mounted on a four foot extension to the original 4" x 6" post. The new camera uses the existing 150 watt solar panel, Morningstar MPPT charge controller and 100Ah gel storage battery.
In the black box is the charge controller and storage battery. The grey box contains the charge controller LCD monitor, a CradlePoint MBR95 cellular router/switch and a raspberry pi that is used as the RTSP to RTMP YouTube server. The raspberry pi also monitors the internet connection and reboots the router if the internet goes down. In the winter time, this is a daylight only camera, so the raspberry pi is used to remove power from everything except the router and pi. This conserves battery power when the days are short and the weather is cold.
This camera is connected to YouTube Live. The link is below.
The new camera is a Dahua SD49225T-HN 2mp 25x zoom with IR. This camera I mounted on a four foot extension to the original 4" x 6" post. The new camera uses the existing 150 watt solar panel, Morningstar MPPT charge controller and 100Ah gel storage battery.
In the black box is the charge controller and storage battery. The grey box contains the charge controller LCD monitor, a CradlePoint MBR95 cellular router/switch and a raspberry pi that is used as the RTSP to RTMP YouTube server. The raspberry pi also monitors the internet connection and reboots the router if the internet goes down. In the winter time, this is a daylight only camera, so the raspberry pi is used to remove power from everything except the router and pi. This conserves battery power when the days are short and the weather is cold.
This camera is connected to YouTube Live. The link is below.
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