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Diabolix

CCTV through 3G

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Hi,

 

I am planning to setup a IP camera on a remote site, which will use a 3G connection to send footage back to the office,but there is a few things I would like to know before I get started.

 

I did some research, and I will be using the H.264 compression method to keep the bandwidth to a minimum. What resolution and FPS will be sufficient to supply me with a good view-able picture. The only motion will probably be some birds and if someone wants to steel the equipment . I was also thinking about making a onsite storage system, so that the camera can record on the site and only stream footage when I log into the cameras web interface (Due to 3G costs). What do you guys think will be the best possible solution ?

 

Power will probably be coming from a solar panel.

 

Thanx in advance.

 

Regards

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Sounds reasonable - there are a number of IP cameras with on-board storage that will simply write to internal SD card or even HDD. Minimizing equipment count this way (vs. external recording) will help keep power requirements down. If there's a concern about the camera itself being stolen, you could also look into any of a number of low-power mobile DVRs or NVRs (which can be powered off 12VDC, which is what your solar system likely provides), or a very basic NAS (something that can use SSD or laptop drives, again to keep power requirements down, although most of these will need 120/240VAC, so you lose a little power stepping the voltage up).

 

Naturally, you'll need to have some sort of battery backup or alternate power source, to keep things running when there's no sun...

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You might (or might not) find this document that I wrote to be helpful:

 

http://support.videoiq.com/docs/MobileBroadband.pdf

 

Note that since I wrote it, it is geared towards our cameras specifically, but most of the concepts are generic to 3G/4G connections.

 

Using h.264 you should be able to get a 2.1 Megapixel 10fps image stream in about 3Mbps of bandwidth, which you probably WON'T get as an upstream on a 3G or 4G connection. Your best option is to record locally and export/copy interesting video out when needed. Use a lower res stream for basic viewing.

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