Solar power wireless camera system

What type of activity are you expecting to monitor?

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My attic sucks to crawl in.

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A lot of them suck to crawl in, but it's still the way to go. If you don't want to do it, pay someone to do it so you will get 4X the image quality and capture 10X more events.


ETA: Full disclosure, I may be biased because I install cameras. But I also would not want to provide support for a solar camera unless it was absolutely the only way to power the camera.

Probably "siamese" coax+power for analog cameras. And yes, I'd recommend replacing with cat5/6 for IP cameras. If they're not stapled down you can use them as pull strings for the new cable and save a lot of crawling.


You might be happy with solar/battery cams, but if you've had wired cams before then you probably know that a lot of times that dead/idle footage can be very useful. And if the camera only records when it detects something, you will never know what it misses.

If you still want to go solar, before buying 8 I would buy 1 first and place it where you expect the most activity, both to gauge whether the solar panel will keep up the charge and so you can monitor how often it might miss an interesting event.

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If they're not stapled down you can use them as pull strings for the new cable and save a lot of crawling.

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This right here.

So if I stick with wired and pull the wires, what systems you guys recommend?

Just basic home surveillance. Around $500 mark

Solar powered anything sucks. We had our gate solar powered and security cameras and they both crapped the bed quickly. If you insist on cheap /DIY security cameras and don’t want the wiring pain in the arse let me suggest some of those ones that have extremely long battery life (like 2months-ish I think ). You’ll have to ladder up and take them off to recharge every couple months though. I’ve gone this route and it worked well. The security camera companies I’ve called around to have been wayyyyy more $ than I wanna pay for that. Like 3,000$+ and lots of monthly fees. I’m sure they do great work but I don’t really need 4K or pan/tilt/zoom with a big TV HUB inside like I’m Scarface. I just wanted to be able to catch stuff and take a peep at my house when I’m out of town.