Remote security camera. Solar PT 2 PT wifi, etc.

[viper]

I have a rural property and need camera support.  They will be mounted on poles in the air.  I'm certainly not trying to hide them, rather exploiting them as deterrents.  I have professional cameras with lots of connection options so trying to figure this stuff out.  Cams have POE network connection, composite vid, audio input jack, I/O ability, power as either the POE, 12VDC, or 24VAC.  Consumption is 22W if heaters will have to run, 12.5W if heaters are left off.  Honestly pretty power hungry IMO. 

What I am looking to do is set/bury a 'con box' and run up the pole with my wiring.  I will need to power the cam, set a small solar panel for charging, select a battery tech either Li or Pb, figure out a charge controller solution, and somehow pipe the signal from the camera back to home base via a point 2 point wireless solution.  Ubiquiti comes recommended.  To be honest, what I am trying to do is integrate and simplify this!  The components are adding up and I would think someone has already crossed this bridge! 

Getting physical wire to these sites is not practical and I have experience with solar so not too worried about that.  Trying to beam the signal without spending a grand on each site is my issue. 

[darkspr1te]

I recently had to do this myself, here was my solution.


I already had on hand some 120ah 12v batteries from a ups refresh i had done recently, while not great they serve my purpose fine.
I used the 120ah battery connected to a 12v solar charger (originally had a cheep china made but then was gifted a victron mppt)
camera is a EZVIZ night vision cn3
link to house is via two Ubiquity Nanostation m5's in bridge mode and another router that is located in the power house where i have a inverter and another two Nanostatio m5 bridge to the office.
it originally started off as just panel, camera,battery & charger but now is fully integrated into Homeassitant in both power and camera display  and backend recording via Agentdvr or Shinobi


While yes the parts add up I found this better than the failed cameras i was replacing which were super locked into the cloud, no parts for the dc-dc module (all markings gone) no support for firmware updates now (despite being a 2022 camera) , battery pack was one large pouch and two 18650's in the mount. while a neat all in one  at first glance i found they had many issues that show after about 6 months of use, first was battery duration, then after that i noticed it would take 3 times longer to be online than normal and only a tftp reflash would bring it back to being online in under two minutes. no issues with the sdcard used though but the rest left a lot to be desired.


With the newer setup i can swap parts to my heart and content even keep stock. while the mppt controller is the largest cost so i have cheap ones on hand but the rest all cost less than the "quality wireless AC long distance CCTV with solar and battery"  and i know the setup works as i am copying what my brother setup a few years ago and has worked flawless since, even when his battery saw EOL it was a case of flick the switch in HAssitant to cancel alarm and swap with locally sourced 12v7ah battery, No strange pouch cells to worry about, no odd voltage dc-dc converters and the cloud side of ezviz is easy to cut off and re-route internally with the Hivision sdk app.


anyway, my 2 cents


darkspr1te

[viper]

I appreciate the response!  I am trying to make some decisions here to try to future-proof the system.  One issue I face is just that solar stuff does not seem to financially scale down this far so it looks like I will prob spend the same for a 200W setup or a 1000W.  For instance, I can snag commercial panels for days and even have them on hand. 

I am sort of leaning towards an AC inverter and running all systems off 120V.  Why?  POE is extremely common, injectors are everywhere, and if I need to plug in new gear, it's out there.  I am not just looking at the cameras, I'm looking at wireless radios.  What sucks is all this gear actually runs on DC anyway so I would be doing nonsense conversions. 

I just tested one of my small inverters, 1000W and it pulls 5W in standby. 

I am now curious how the Ubuiquitis are powered?  I'm trying not to have much up the pole and keep all power supplies in the underground base station for service.