Hello, i was asked to put a couple cameras up in a gated community at the back gates. They want to be able to read the license plates of the cars coming in and going out. Some times cars tailgate to get in... From the back gates to the club house ( where the communications are) is about 0.5 miles away. There are trees along the whole route with NO line of sight. They said they ran wire along the road a few years back to future proof everything. I have to find out what kind of wire it is, they did not know at the time. rg6 rg59...or fiber? Here are a list of things i know so far...

1. Ethernet is out of the question unless i put a switch up every 1000ft with a poe booster at each end. ( on a pole or something) not likely!
2. If they have rg6 or 59 run all the way i can get some kind of booster and hopefully a 1080p analog license plate camera will transmit quality image that long distance.
3. There is NO line of sight so there is no way to get ubiqiti point to point wireless working. 2.4ghz will be noisy in a town home community.
4. Fiber will be the best bet but expensive. How hard is it to run fiber/cable in the existing PVC that runs 0.5 miles down the road given there is some room?

I don't want to give up on this project but it's not looking to easy. ANY suggestions will be much appreciated. Thank you.

Check out the system: EX-SDI at eyenix.com.
We tested out the system on the conventional cable of length of 700 meter.
It definetely offers much higher performance for longer distance than HD-SDI, HD-TVI, HD-CVI, and HD-AHD.
EX-SDI seems to be based on that a slight compression can reduce the high frequency component in a signal content, using low frequency as a carrier frequency, therby gaining much longer distance in forms of digital data comunication (TX and RX wise).

Check out ubiquiti nanoststations. You can shoot gigabit over 15km wirelessly from point to point. You’ll need to mount a pole so you can get above the tree line, but it will be cheaper than what you are wanting to do.

Are u serious?

I would look into the existing pvc if it is that long they should have put in hand holds or junction boxes to make pulling the cable easier. Check out fiber costs and you will find for the bandwith and flexibility is may be your cheapest way to go. The ubiquity solution will not be cheap while the equipment is reasonable you are looking at setting utility poles and providing power to the units which can be expensive.

It’s POE, you don’t need to do a utility drop for nanostations. It’s a much better option then trying to tap the PED or ONT for fiber from a trunk line. Unless there is already internet at the location site to site is the way to go. We have ran into 25 or 30 such occasions at guard towers in a gated community. The infrastructure just wasn’t there. But we were able to relay site to site and achieve consistent 150/150 over the air.

Anywhere else in the world that would be called a prison

Their cable company actually ran internet to their service box by the gates. They had a router in there which makes things a whole lot easier. they want the cameras mounted on lighting poles 20 ft away. I was thinking instead of cutting the asphalt to run wire i would use a wifi bridge and steal power from the street light poles but they run on 40 amp breakers right? By code we can only hook up low voltage to 20 amp breakers, is this correct? Even if code allowed me to do that it would cost an additional 6-700 dollars ( weatherprrof enclosure, poe switch, ups, wifi bridge) so i told them they'd be better off cutting through the asphalt.

Where would i get utility poles like that? Im guessing the trees are over 50ft easy.

Are there no light poles anywhere near this location? What about tall buildings? You can bounce the signal from a low point to a high point and then back down if you need to. If there are buildings above the tree line in the area you might want to think about contacting the building manager to see if you can install some equipment on the roof for the relay equipment.

can you provide a little line drawing with indication of how things are presently hooked up and where you want cameras. I am getting confused. Some times you can use existing utility poles but many times the owners will not let you attach anything to their poles without a contact. In our area the power companies are very strict about this.

Yeah, I would like to see that as well. I’ve done a very similar job to what you are describing in the villages Florida and I would like to find a way to help you.