Solar powered 3G/4G CCTV Sytsem

[Kymadn]

Hi all, I am new to the forum and also to the CCTV world. I have a good background in networking and electronics. I specialise in wireless communications and RF by trade.

I have a question on directly accessing multiple cameras located on 1 site without a NVR.

I will have up to 3 cameras on solar linking back to a common industrial 3G/4G modem forwarding camera ports for iDMSS access. The cameras will record locally to SD Card.

I want to know what is the best configuration to view all 3 cameras on a single screen of iDMSS. Would i be best to setup up 3 static IP's for the cameras all with the same DDNS domain? will that work?

Basically i am hoping to be able to preview all 3 cameras as you would when accessing an NVR on iDMSS (if it is possible).

 

[00Buck]

I have gDMSS and you can set up favorites to view multiple cameras or NVR's, Pull up the live view and tap the + on one of the camera view windows, choose the camera you want to view. When you get all three up tap the favorites star and save as whatever name you want.

 

[Dodutils]

Hello,

Do you have the specs of you solar power system ? I do also electronic and I am always interested about how people manage 100% solar powered systems, what technology they chose, bought or DIY, the battery power sizing and solar panels, the type of solar panel mono/poly, the sizing of power in case of very bad weather with no sun, 1/2/3 days ? will the system run at night too, and if yes what kind of IR lights (if not integrated inside the camera) ... and of course the final cost of all this.

regards.

 

[Kymadn]

I have gDMSS and you can set up favorites to view multiple cameras or NVR's, Pull up the live view and tap the + on one of the camera view windows, choose the camera you want to view. When you get all three up tap the favorites star and save as whatever name you want.

Thanks Buck, that''s a good way to cluster the cameras together on the app. How about the network configuration settings? What is the best way to access them without an NVR installed?

Is it best to use ddns to setup web access?
i assume they would each need a unique ddns domain, then as you suggested i can create a camera cluster with the favorites preset.

Is P2P just for if the devices are on the same network?

 

[Kymadn]

Hello,

Do you have the specs of you solar power system ? I do also electronic and I am always interested about how people manage 100% solar powered systems, what technology they chose, bought or DIY, the battery power sizing and solar panels, the type of solar panel mono/poly, the sizing of power in case of very bad weather with no sun, 1/2/3 days ? will the system run at night too, and if yes what kind of IR lights (if not integrated inside the camera) ... and of course the final cost of all this.

regards.

I have selected all the hardware and calculated power consumption, battery capacity requirements and solar panel size. Calculations include consideration of poor over cast weather to always keep the batteries charged. The system i have designed runs 24/7. it is built for fast deployment and expansion. I am still waiting for all my parts on order to build the enclosure and start testing the proof of concept. The final cost of the project is approx $2000 using industrial quality products (1x camera, modem, solar panel + pole mount bracket, battery, regulator, antenna etc).

 

[Dodutils]

I have selected all the hardware and calculated power consumption, battery capacity requirements and solar panel size. Calculations include consideration of poor over cast weather to always keep the batteries charged. The system i have designed runs 24/7. it is built for fast deployment and expansion. I am still waiting for all my parts on order to build the enclosure and start testing the proof of concept. The final cost of the project is approx $2000 using industrial quality products (1x camera, modem, solar panel + pole mount bracket, battery, regulator, antenna etc).

What is the power consumption of your camera + 4G modem ?
What is the mAh capacity of the batteries and the voltage ?
What is the total max amp of the solar cells and their voltage (or the total max Watt) ?

 

[Kymadn]

What is the power consumption of your camera + 4G modem ?
What is the mAh capacity of the batteries and the voltage ?
What is the total max amp of the solar cells and their voltage (or the total max Watt) ?

 

[Dodutils]

11W is the total power used by the camera + 4G router ? are your sure about this ? do your camera have IR led or external IR light ?

 

[Fastb]

Have you connected to the cellular carrier yet w/ the 3G/4G modem?
I made a system for connecting a portable camera surveillance system using a cell carrier. Verizon had a good pricing for 2GB/mo. Then I learned they charge $500 to get a static public ip. Remote viewing to a very dynamic ip address can't be done, becuase you never knonw what ip address the carrier gave you today....
P2P had too much overhead - it would consume 1 to 2 GB/mo

Fastb

 

[nayr]

dyndns

 

[Dodutils]

P2P had too much overhead - it would consume 1 to 2 GB/mo

This is strange because P2P cameras should not stream anything if no P2P client connect and ask for video streaming but I saw bad designed P2P client on Android that stand in background and never stop getting video stream whenever you go leave app (app stay in notification bar and its impossible to really quit app without killing it).

 

[nayr]

its got to maintain a persistant connection and keep it open, thats going to consume data all by its self.. and depending on how frequently the mobile provider kills that connection (most have hard timeouts) the more it'll use trying to keep it open.

 

[Kymadn]

:

Have you connected to the cellular carrier yet w/ the 3G/4G modem?
I made a system for connecting a portable camera surveillance system using a cell carrier. Verizon had a good pricing for 2GB/mo. Then I learned they charge $500 to get a static public ip. Remote viewing to a very dynamic ip address can't be done, becuase you never knonw what ip address the carrier gave you today....
P2P had too much overhead - it would consume 1 to 2 GB/mo

Fastb

Not yet, my modem is shipped and should arrive in another 2 days. I am in Australia, and will use the Telstra mobile network. It wont have a static IP address so by using a ddns URL such as example.quickddns.com:"port'' it will know what the IP address is when it changes.

 

[Kymadn]

11W is the total power used by the camera + 4G router ? are your sure about this ? do your camera have IR led or external IR light ?

Yes the 4G modem uses less <7W and the camera <6.5W. I have approximated an average over 24 hours however when the equipment arrives i will do real power consumption measurements. The camera has IR, i was looking at using the IPC-HDBW4431e-as for testing.

 

[Fastb]

I met with a Verizon System Engineer. Verizon used a NAT between their dynamic, frequently changing public ip for my system, and the ip for my cellular modem. That thwarted dyndns.
They touted the NAT as a benefit, to isolate my system (private) from the ip address for the outside world (public). "Whatsmyip.com" could give me the public ip in use at any moment. But I couldn't reach my system remotely without somehow going through their NAT.
The one-and-only solution was to get Verizon to issue me a static ip, which was $500 for up to 20 ip addresses.
If I was gonna deploy a bunch of 3G/4G connected systems, the cost/system comes down.

Gotta say, Verizon was very supportive of my efforts. M2M (Machine 2 Machine) for IoT (Internet of Things) is something they're working to support. For many IoT system, the private ip (behind their NAT) makes the system less "reachable" by the bad guys. And let's IoT devices talk to others on Verizon''s private network, without traversing the "dangerous" public network. Eg: an IoT-enabled vending machine or a kiosk could send info (including financial info) all while on Verizon's Private Network.

Anywhoo, for info on camera systems connected via cellular, see these threads:
Cellular Modem for remote access to NVR

4G LTE setup

Good Luck!
Fastb

PS: I may have mangled some of the finer details of public/private/NAT/etc....

 

[Dodutils]

its got to maintain a persistant connection and keep it open, thats going to consume data all by its self.. and depending on how frequently the mobile provider kills that connection (most have hard timeouts) the more it'll use trying to keep it open.

what is going to maintain a persistant connection ? to what ?

 

[nayr]

P2P has to keep an outbound connection open to the china servers so it can use that to get inside the network.. With P2P the NVR and Cloud Service are always connected and talking; if that connection is lost then P2P wont work since Cloud cant connect to NVR and requires NVR to connect to cloud.

P2P acts like a reverse tunnel proxy, NVR connects to Proxy then Client Connects to Proxy and tunnels into NVR using that outbound connection NVR made.. the proxy is in the cloud as everything has to connect to that.

It bypasses the need for a routable IP address that you have control over, but does add a bunch of network chatter even when its not doing anything.. Not ideal when your paying for data usage

 

[Fastb]

I was paying $46/mo for 2GB for the commercial M2M data plan.
My customer prospects, who were primarily interested in remote access if an "event" occurred on the job site, would have a hard time understanding that their data plan was being "dinged" for maintaining P2P connection. That doesn't deliver direct "value" to them, or enhance their job site security.
They also wanted the ability of checking on their job site during the day, to check activity level and progress. That delivers value to them that they can understand. But paying for maintaining a "P2P Connection"? Their eyes would glaze over. I could hear these construction guys saying "I P on your P2P!"
Comcast as ISP doesn't promise a static ip. From experience, it rarely changes. Like twice a year. So I need to update gDMSS sometimes, to point it to the new ip addr.
Thankfully, Push Notifications still work. I just can't do a Remote Live View. So I conclude my public IP changed.
Paying for a Comcast connection, if only for 6 to 9 months, was more financially attractive than a cellular connection.
a) paying the one-time Verizon setup fee for a static ip and
b) paying for Cellular for wide-band internet access, and
c) the next job location might have lousy Verizon coverage, meaning I'd start over with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.

Kymadn, YMMV, esp down under in Australia!
I hope you're having a nice summer!

Fastb

 

[Dodutils]

P2P has to keep an outbound connection open to the china servers

I've been looking to some RFC about this P2P dedicated camera protocol but couldn't find any.

I have sniffed the network between a P2P client and a P2P camera and saw no proxy flow for video stream, the video stream was direct between my Client public IP and the public IP of the Camera (camera behind my router so private IP and I have set no special NAT rule), only some packet has been sent from camera to the chinese server to identify itself with it's serial ID and same for Client app that requested info to this server asking for IP attached to the serial ID I entered in P2P client configuration.

For what I saw it worked more like uPNP device like those WebRTC video chat server like appear.in for example.

Or may be there is two level of negociation, it first try the uPNP thing then if it fails it switch to proxy mode ?

And this connection was amazingly fully unecrypted and the login/password clear text !!! I tried this on a Hi3518E FullHD (Escam QD900) low cost camera and two different P2P software.

If you have any link to tech/developer's documentation I would be happy to read it.

p.s : sorry @Kymadn about being out of topic in this discussion ;-)

 

[nayr]

RFC 3024 - Reverse Tunneling for Mobile IP, revised
Reverse connection - Wikipedia

Vendors are free to implement a reverse proxy back into your network however they wish; but the fundimentals are the same.. the most common method used among neckbeards is the reverse ssh tunnel, google it.