Security without power or internet

@fuse we were talking about how to tackle this problem on the phone yesterday. I think I have an idea.

The problem breaks down to Camera, Power, Data, and Storage/Monitoring.

We are lucky, it seems one company may have the Camera, Data, and Storage/Monitoring figured out, Reolink.

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This is the Reolink Go with solar panel accessory which runs $261.24 with free shipping.
Reolink Go, a 100% wire-free mobile HD security camera, operates on 4G-LTE and 3G networks. An ideal video monitoring solution with no cords, no wiring hassles, when in areas with limited or no WiFi access, no electrical power source!

For image storage and monitoring, the camera has an internal storage option and sends push notifications when triggered. Or, there is Reolink Cloud. The basic package is FREE and offers 7 day video history and 1GB of cloud storage for 1 camera. As this camera will be setup only to record when it recognizes motion, the storage is our main concern. Also the service pushes notifications when the camera is triggered. There are other plans with more options ranging from $2.49 per month to 4.99 per month.

The last problem is DATA, this system need a 4G LTE Cellular sim and plan. For this I’m thinking TING is the way to go. The nice thing about ting is that you don’t have to guess how much data you are going to use. Instead they change your plan based on your use. So if the camera is quite for a month, you get the minimum charge of $6 base fee and $3 data that month for 100MBs of data. Or, lets say that we are watching the camera a lot, then we get bumped to the $10 per GB after 2GBs of use plus base fee of $6.

So how much Data will we need?
Data usage of Reolink Go depends on the bitrate you set up. 1 hour of live feed in Clear mode (default bitrate: 1.5Mbps) will use about 1GB of data. And if you use 1GB of data to stream live feed in Fluent mode (default bitrate: 160kbps), you can watch for 10 hours. Based on that, you can estimate the data usage to choose the right data plan for you.

I’m also getting a quote from a local vendor that specializes in security like this.

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I use a Spypoint Link S game camera with similar functionality. It’s worked great for a year so far.

Chris

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Yeah,
I saw those as well. They seem like the other fully figured out option. I think the biggest difference is the solar mounting options.

There many low voltage options. There are many HD cameras that require a single IR led for night time recording. Many DVRs are 12VDC. So the attn should go to your battery bank/solar panels. With today’s wireless access point you can send data for miles or just secure your recorder and save the data on site.

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Thanks for the info Lee,
Do you have any suggested sources for this stuff?