Wireless Security Camera Recommendations

[Evening Shade]

Hey guys I would like to get some wireless security cameras to put at my lake house so I can keep an eye on things when I'm not there.

Looking for recommendations.

TIA

[sstexan]

Arlo is the way to go wireless. The biggest challenge is battery life and making sure your base station is close enough for the cameras to communicate. Costco or Amazon seem to be the cheapest.

[Evening Shade]

Arlo is the way to go wireless. The biggest challenge is battery life and making sure your base station is close enough for the cameras to communicate. Costco or Amazon seem to be the cheapest.

I was looking at Arlo at Costco. What kind of battery life can you expect? How far can the camera be from the base station and still communicate?

[sstexan]

Battery life is going to be contingent on how often your motion goes off. For example at my house I have 5 cameras. Front Door, Front yard toward street view, inside garage, side yard by pool equipment, side door. The camera facing the street battery last 45 days. The others last 3 months. Amazon has batteries and extra chargers that are cheap and work great. Tons of aftermarket mounting options. You will want the cameras to be able to be reached without getting a ladder out. My farthest camera is probably 200' through a few walls and still gets adequate signal. I bought 2 extra batteries and just swap them out so I don't need to wait to recharge.

[bturner]

The recharging is what is keeping me from going this direction. Also if you can reach them without a ladder so can someone else. I have a friend that had 2 of his trail cams stolen from his house that he was using to cover some of his out buildings. The sad (and kind of funny) part is when you have your security system stolen by the same people you're trying to catch stealing from you. I also heard a story once of a guy having his guard dog stolen from for his storage yard. Makes you wonder......

I've changed direction and will probably go with a PoE (Power over Ethernet) solution for the house, then use another PoE switch connected through a wireless access point located in our detached garage. This will get me the coverage I need without the need to have separate power at the cameras as the power will come from the cat 5/6 data cable. I'll still have to pull cable but it'll be easy runs going back to the wireless router, which will in turn will connect wireless to remote access point.

The other thing I heard is that the battery life is greatly shortened with extreme cold. We live up here in the north and fully expect for the cameras to see -0 conditions at night on a regular basis. I have no first hand knowledge with these cameras so I can only go with rumor. Maybe someone else has a better idea as to what performance would be under these harsh conditions.

[jondavis08]

I’ve been happy with Arlo. Best if you can plug them in however or add a solar panel.


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[srock]

My experiences may help those looking:

I have 2 ring cameras on my lake house and they have been great. I have a power supply but I don't have internet so I use a Verizon hot spot to run them. It's a $20 per month addition to my phone service. We dropped the cable and internet at the lake and use an antenna and mobile phone hot spots and tablets with no issue. We can even catch a movie with ROKU.

I use the ring camera with the solar charger on my job sites with never an issue on battery life. Not once in 2 years of using them have they fallen to low to record in fact they would probably run over a week without a charge. I have Comcast in my office and sometimes I can find their free wireless signal near my jobsite if not I have a Verizon hot spot that provides connectivity. They have definitely helped with nighttime security and also with a couple sub issues.

In addition have 2 in my office hallways. They are not there to monitor employees but to provide an alarm to my cell on non-working hours and days. I no longer pay to have my burglar alarm monitored and the police don't show up to those anymore. By having them inside I don't deal with false notifications or people walking by so if I get an alert I know its something serious. That allows me to have an alarm at night without it keeping me up every hour. You may want to do something similar at the lake.

Good luck