I want to setup a wireless monitoring system for an area of forested land that I can access from anywhere. Essentially, I want to connect 3G internet to a very powerful wifi router/antenna, all solar/battery powered. Then set up wireless cams across a large area. I then want to be able to access the cameras from over the internet.
I am looking at diying a system sort of like this: (BuckEye Cam Home). I would consider that system but it is far too expensive, especially per camera.
I know this isn't closely related to this forum, but I figure theres as a good a likelihood somewhere here has some idea as anywhere. My main question is anyone already doing anything like this? I can't find anything on Google, but I imagine this could relate to a lot of different fields besides wildlife monitoring. I'm also curious about generally, feasibility, problems, etc.
I'm especially curious about power consumption, as a big picture. Will a high powered antenna setup reasonably run off a solar panel and big deep cycle battery? What about a PC based server (to control cameras, record data)? Could I set up a VPN or something so I could just connect to the network from my home PC and not run any server on site?
IP camera and 3g router would work, stick it in a box with a battery for a fraction of $2k.
You mention server and monitoring, the system you linked to doesn't do any of this as far as I can tell so what is this server meant to be doing? I'd avoid a VPN and using a local PC for any recording\monitoring data due to the bandwidth charges and reliability\consistency of data.
for an area of forested land that I can access from anywhere. Essentially, I want to connect 3G internet to a very powerful wifi router/antenna, all solar/battery powered.
Well what sort of area are we talking about, 100 yards or 10 miles?
The microwave signals used for wi-fi do not travel well through forest. Essentially trees act as vertical conducting rods and they aggregate into a shield.
I have set up similar systems for monitoring farms. I have tried various hardware but have found the Ubiquiti networking gear the best without going industrial strength. Their website is:
They are weatherproof so no housing is required and they run POE so only one cable is needed. I use their Bullet and Nanobridge units. I found the cheapest place to buy them was from a Lithuanian company:
They are cheaper than brand name domestic units but are more robust and better built and their firmware is great for setup, monitoring and diagnosis. Their antennas are fairly expensive so I get them elsewhere. (I am in Australia).
I have not tried their cameras (they are a new line) but use Foscam ones instead. http://www.foscam.com/
For remote power I use a standard car battery, and 5 amp solar regulator and a 30 watt solar panel all mounted on a 1.75 inch galvanised steel pole (with some protection from the cows).
With a mix of parabolic and omnidirectional antenna I get 1-2 kms between stations with only 100 mW!
They have the free Airvision software (Windows and Ubuntu) to monitor, control and record several cameras at once (have not tried it yet).
(I sound like an advertisement but I have no association with them. Its just that their gear is a breath of fresh air after cobbling together and waterproofing domestic units).