Vandal resistance is same for any camera (wired or wireless) with wireless actually having some advantages. Its also easy to improve wireless connectivity for just wireless cameras by using inexpensive 2.4G Wireless repeaters (they will work rather well to support wireless IP cameras of upto 1080p resolution).
But supplying reliable power could get very challenging for some cases. Every-time you abruptly lose power and your recording system (on or off camera recorder) turns off abruptly your filesystem on the storage media has a risk of getting corrupted, losing all recorded data part from not being able to record more data till power is restored.
Wirefree cameras
=============
Generally wire-free cameras advertise long lasting battery times (on a single charge or replacement) such as 3-6 months, 6-12 months and even 2 years. However the fine print that is missed out is that this projection is made on a premise that no more than few minutes of motion triggered recordings will be generated per day. For eg., the most reputed brands and models:
(a) Amazon Blink XT2 - Advertised 2 years on 2xAA batteries. However continuous recording capacity is only 15 hours.
(b) Netgear Arlo - Advertised 3 to 6 months on proprietary battery. Assumption is that recording is made for Only 5 minutes per day
(c) EufyCam 2 -
(d) Reolink Argus 2 Pro
So if the above assumption do not hold, you are going to see very low battery lifetime. false alarms on birds, squirrels, dogs, at times moving trees and branches in wind, cloud, light (AI not working well), etc (if sensor is not a pure PIR) all add up to the recordings. Poor Wifi impacts Battery drain rate negatively too. You may get a week, sometimes 2, sometimes a month or max 2 months juice of a battery charge cycle. And now the big $$$ wire-free camera system bought on big expense and cloud subscription charges will sound *not so attractive and a pain (frequent replacing/charging batteries) to maintain, however good its mobile app is or how well it alerts you and 911, etc. Their could be some limitations on how well the PIR sensor behaves and at times it could be slow to react and record or miss few seconds of critical footage before the event of interest.
Bus Powered Wireless Cameras
=======================
Usually in many cases its easier to find a power line (or tap) or socket nearby or even at the site of camera install. It may also be feasible to run cabling in some homes which have false ceilings if no free wall-chased spare conduits. Atleast its much easier to get bus power than running a new ethernet or category-N cable.
Bus powered wifi cameras use anywhere between 2.5-5W (5V-1A). You will need 2.5-5 WHs of energy. In India, we get frequent power outages even in cities AND we get DC-DC UPS equipment with about 22wh of capacity, making them suitable in giving battery backup of 4-8 hours . This is likely enough for most deployments, but this may cost an additional 2/3rd of camera cost plus make the system a little DIY installation unfriendly (because you need to conceal the weather un-proof DC-DC UPS unit in a mounted IP rated hensel box or something similar and make some holes to let equipment breathe). If you live in an area of very frequent outages, the frequent discharge-charge cycles will also likely reduce the DC-DC UPS Li-Ion battery life (which are non replaceable) , but its still manageable if it has done to be replaced once every year or two.
If your home has DG backup (which limits outage to 30s-1min max) OR you have a home inverter supporting 4-6 hours daily backup OR even an on-grid solar power, this solution becomes slight overkill as the real need is of having a very low WH & inexpensive DC-DC UPS [maybe with 1x18650 battery of 2000 mah capacity instead of 3-4 used in DC-DC UPS and user replaceable] and give 5-15 minutes of backup. It could even possibly be built using supercapacitors, but such products are not see in local market as of 2020.
Our ideal bus-powered Wifi camera supports H.265 or H.265+/Ultra H.265 encoding, 128 GB SD Card (atleast), barrel or Micro USB power jack requiring no more than 1A of current draw. And then you have the smart features thrown in like others.
Wired PoE IP cameras
================
Wired IP cameras need 6-12W of power. Even many bus powered wireless cameras by manufacturers of PoE IP cameras use 12V DC input of 0.5-1A rating. This means 6-12WH of energy which is very similar to a consumer entry level to mid-range Wifi router. If you are using such wireless cameras (eg., Hikvision Ezviz C3X), the DC-DC UPS which are primarily designed for wifi router backup can support such wireless cameras for 2-4 hours backup time and should work fine if you have the DC-DC UPS installed. Should work in most cases.
But when using PoE IP cameras, power comes on Ethernet cable from a rack that will have a PoE Switch AND recorder, which means like power supply is also centralized. Therefore the central node must have a UPS backup and that central UPS, The power need will be less than 50W for this system. Lower Consumer UPSes (600-650 VA) on light loads cannot run for more than 1 hour when no-load shutdown is disabled (if you will enable it will switch off in 5 minutes). So if a single outages exceeds 1 hour you are in trouble AND its required to have DG/Solar/Inverter backup. Or you need to go for a higher capacity UPS which can run for more than 1 hour on light CCTV load, which means more $$$. UPS battery life should be 3 years atleast, irrespective of whether they come with 1 year or 3 year warranty.
Our recommendation still remains (1) or (2) for small installations, provided you can get 3 basic requirements sorted. It would be best bang for bucks.
But supplying reliable power could get very challenging for some cases. Every-time you abruptly lose power and your recording system (on or off camera recorder) turns off abruptly your filesystem on the storage media has a risk of getting corrupted, losing all recorded data part from not being able to record more data till power is restored.
Wirefree cameras
=============
Generally wire-free cameras advertise long lasting battery times (on a single charge or replacement) such as 3-6 months, 6-12 months and even 2 years. However the fine print that is missed out is that this projection is made on a premise that no more than few minutes of motion triggered recordings will be generated per day. For eg., the most reputed brands and models:
(a) Amazon Blink XT2 - Advertised 2 years on 2xAA batteries. However continuous recording capacity is only 15 hours.
(b) Netgear Arlo - Advertised 3 to 6 months on proprietary battery. Assumption is that recording is made for Only 5 minutes per day
(c) EufyCam 2 -
(d) Reolink Argus 2 Pro
So if the above assumption do not hold, you are going to see very low battery lifetime. false alarms on birds, squirrels, dogs, at times moving trees and branches in wind, cloud, light (AI not working well), etc (if sensor is not a pure PIR) all add up to the recordings. Poor Wifi impacts Battery drain rate negatively too. You may get a week, sometimes 2, sometimes a month or max 2 months juice of a battery charge cycle. And now the big $$$ wire-free camera system bought on big expense and cloud subscription charges will sound *not so attractive and a pain (frequent replacing/charging batteries) to maintain, however good its mobile app is or how well it alerts you and 911, etc. Their could be some limitations on how well the PIR sensor behaves and at times it could be slow to react and record or miss few seconds of critical footage before the event of interest.
Bus Powered Wireless Cameras
=======================
Usually in many cases its easier to find a power line (or tap) or socket nearby or even at the site of camera install. It may also be feasible to run cabling in some homes which have false ceilings if no free wall-chased spare conduits. Atleast its much easier to get bus power than running a new ethernet or category-N cable.
Bus powered wifi cameras use anywhere between 2.5-5W (5V-1A). You will need 2.5-5 WHs of energy. In India, we get frequent power outages even in cities AND we get DC-DC UPS equipment with about 22wh of capacity, making them suitable in giving battery backup of 4-8 hours . This is likely enough for most deployments, but this may cost an additional 2/3rd of camera cost plus make the system a little DIY installation unfriendly (because you need to conceal the weather un-proof DC-DC UPS unit in a mounted IP rated hensel box or something similar and make some holes to let equipment breathe). If you live in an area of very frequent outages, the frequent discharge-charge cycles will also likely reduce the DC-DC UPS Li-Ion battery life (which are non replaceable) , but its still manageable if it has done to be replaced once every year or two.
If your home has DG backup (which limits outage to 30s-1min max) OR you have a home inverter supporting 4-6 hours daily backup OR even an on-grid solar power, this solution becomes slight overkill as the real need is of having a very low WH & inexpensive DC-DC UPS [maybe with 1x18650 battery of 2000 mah capacity instead of 3-4 used in DC-DC UPS and user replaceable] and give 5-15 minutes of backup. It could even possibly be built using supercapacitors, but such products are not see in local market as of 2020.
Our ideal bus-powered Wifi camera supports H.265 or H.265+/Ultra H.265 encoding, 128 GB SD Card (atleast), barrel or Micro USB power jack requiring no more than 1A of current draw. And then you have the smart features thrown in like others.
Wired PoE IP cameras
================
Wired IP cameras need 6-12W of power. Even many bus powered wireless cameras by manufacturers of PoE IP cameras use 12V DC input of 0.5-1A rating. This means 6-12WH of energy which is very similar to a consumer entry level to mid-range Wifi router. If you are using such wireless cameras (eg., Hikvision Ezviz C3X), the DC-DC UPS which are primarily designed for wifi router backup can support such wireless cameras for 2-4 hours backup time and should work fine if you have the DC-DC UPS installed. Should work in most cases.
But when using PoE IP cameras, power comes on Ethernet cable from a rack that will have a PoE Switch AND recorder, which means like power supply is also centralized. Therefore the central node must have a UPS backup and that central UPS, The power need will be less than 50W for this system. Lower Consumer UPSes (600-650 VA) on light loads cannot run for more than 1 hour when no-load shutdown is disabled (if you will enable it will switch off in 5 minutes). So if a single outages exceeds 1 hour you are in trouble AND its required to have DG/Solar/Inverter backup. Or you need to go for a higher capacity UPS which can run for more than 1 hour on light CCTV load, which means more $$$. UPS battery life should be 3 years atleast, irrespective of whether they come with 1 year or 3 year warranty.
Our recommendation still remains (1) or (2) for small installations, provided you can get 3 basic requirements sorted. It would be best bang for bucks.
- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee
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