Lookin for Outdoor wifi security cameras on a budget.

Reolink would be my recommendation

I have Arlo. Good battery life, totally wireless.

Not sure if this helps.

LINK

Look at Wzye

That's awesome work and thanks for sharing! I've put in over a dozen reolink cams for customers in the last couple of months. I'm also looking to make something creative like you did. We have an individual that randomly drives down our street and it seems to happen more often when the neighbor's wife is leaving for work. So I was thinking of some options with reolink and putting something near my mailbox/in my yard just to get a good shot of driver and/or license plate.

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Thanks to 98eagle i just ordered 2 Argus 2 cameras. We have a vehicle that's been up and down our street, which is only a block long (not city block) with 10 houses. Red flag with dude slow crawling through at times and he had been spotted numerous times in previous months sitting at one end of the street or the other. So neighbor and i are gonna make a housing to mount underneath mailbox with hopes of verifying license and possibly better pic of his face. Will see how all this goes once i get cams in and played with, then will get them mounted.

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Not trying to burst your bubble, but rather just trying to help you manage expectations here. The Argus, being battery powered, is normally in standby mode not recording. It only wakes up to record if the PIR sensor detects motion, which might take a few ticks before it can start recording. Also, if the car body is near ambient temp then the PIR sensor might not see it at all.

If it works out for you, I'd love to hear about it as they would be a great supplement to a camera system. But I would not expect to make out faces in vehicles, though people walking by might be identifiable. If it does detect vehicles reliably, then depending on traffic you might be charging it every couple of days. I would not expect it to detect vehicles reliably, though, at least not in time to wake up and get a recording before the vehicle is too far away.

I could be totally wrong, though.

I agree with what Kork said. Based on your initial post, I didn't realize you were looking for facial details (good enough to identify someone you don't already know) and to catch tag numbers based on your intial post. The Argus & Wyze cameras are 1080P cameras which are not clear enough (especially from the average home to street distance) to make out a tag number in most situations. You'll most likely need a higher resolution camera with higher frame rate for making out tag number.

I mentioned that I use the Wyze V3 for continuous recording because it is AC powered. Any 100% wireless cameras that are obviously battery powered can't record continuously. These particular Reolink cameras are motion triggered, or you turn them to record manually. I mentioned that I use my Wyze Cameras for continuous recording, and I use my Reolink cameras for motion detection recording only or to see what's going on.

You have to have an AC powered or Ethernet powered camera for continuous recording. With only motion detected recording, there is probably enough delay (especially with a car driving by) that the camera will start recording too late to even have a chance at a tag number and that would only be if the camera is close enough and the car stopped or going very slow. If you are mounting the car at the street on a mailbox post, then just maybe you might catch a slow driving car tag number driving away from the camera.

The WiFi cameras are great for seeing what is going on. I can identify people walking in the street from 50' to 75' away just because I already know who they are, their shape, size, age, hair color, how they walk, etc. But I couldn't use a Reolink or Wyze camera video in court to prove who someone is from that distance.

I use my WiFi cameras for things like seeing a delivery person bringing something to the house, any suspicious activity, watching wildlife, etc. I like the Argus PT so that I can look at Live View and pan and tilt the camera to monitor suspicious activity in my yard or a neighbors yard or watch wildlife.

Once I came home at night and there was a dead mouse in my driveway. I was going to wait until the next morning to dispose of it. It was gone the next morning. I wanted to see what got it, so I replayed my Wyze driveway cam quickly jumping time frames back and forth to see when the mouse was there and when it disappeared, and within about a minute, I was able to see a cat sneak up and get the mouse. So you can do crazy stuff like that. I also captured deer eating my Lilies in the front yard the same way,i.e., what caused my Lilies to disappear last night, etc.

Here's the coolest use of my Reolink camera (Actually an Argus 2 camera that may be what you just bought). I had a squirrel getting in my attic and his only way to get in was to squeeze through the inside corner of my 2nd story gutter cover on the front of my house that is about 20' from the ground. I put an extension ladder up, climbed up to that area, and designed a way to plug the hole with a short piece of aluminum angle iron. I then got my Argus 2 camera (that I was using on my back deck at the time, but recently replaced it with an Argus PT). Anyway, I attached the Argus 2 wifi cam to a small piece of plywood (maybe 6" x 10") and stapled a piece of foam to the bottom of it so it wouldn't slide off the roof. Then I took the camera up the ladder and placed on the roof a few feet from and facing the hole where the squirrel was coming out. I tested the camera with my smartphone right there to make sure the camera aim was right. Then I went down the ladder, got a cup a coffee and waited until my motion alert came up on my phone. I watched the video of the squirrel coming out of the hole (looking at the camera) and then running off. I immediately climbed the ladder and plugged the hole with the angle iron, but I left the camera so I could watch the squirrel come back to see that it could no longer get in.

Here's the video of the squirrel coming out of the gutter, and the Argus 2 immediately sent an alert to my phone so I could go plug the hole while it was away. It worked like a charm. You can see the clarity of the Argus 2 down at the street level. It wouldn't be good enough for tag identification, but make model & color, yes from a better position of the camera and angle.

Squirrel Leaving The Gutter