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What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Sun 28 Dec 2014 7:23 pm
by aznetcowboy
I am entertaining the idea of adding a webcam to my weather station. However I am not sure what one(s) would best meet my needs. I want one that would be wireless (battery or solar?) that can send a signal about 30 feet (direct line of sight) from my rooftop to my PC. However, I am not sure what experienced users would recommend.

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Tue 28 Jul 2015 11:11 pm
by bzncrew
I'm not a big fan of WiFi cameras. Eat up way too much WiFi bandwidth.

Best option is a POE wired camera. You'll be glad you did.

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Wed 29 Jul 2015 10:23 pm
by BigOkie

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Thu 30 Jul 2015 5:50 am
by ace2
I use a foscam fi9805w which is a wireless model.

But the original quested asked for a completely wireless include battery or solar.
Not too sure about that..

Can you not have a cat5 to do it(POE) or a wireless with power???

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Thu 30 Jul 2015 7:28 am
by vaggos
So do I. I use a foscam fi9805w which is a wireless model for more than 3 years without any problem at all, even in extreme hot or cold. With wifi i didn't had any problem but i prefer ethernet. I have also other four cams, level1, apexis and one no name, which are working perfect with a script from Foscam.

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Thu 30 Jul 2015 9:48 pm
by bzncrew
First of all... solar (no power to the cam) is going to take a fairly big panel and battery to keep it going. If it's cloudy for a while, your batt goes dead and your camera goes off.
It's not practical unless you are willing to have a big 50w panel connected to a deep cycle battery. Probably good for hard to run power to locations. You could even use Yagi antennas to transmit the WiFi up to a couple of miles line of sight. Great for mountain top installs, not on your house.

Since you have to run a line to the thing anyway for power, why consume all your WiFi bandwidth for video. Run power and data of the Cat5 cable and be done with it. Video uses a LOT of data and WiFi is fragile. Turn on the microwave or something and poof, video is gone. I tried it for a while and it really bogged down my WiFi segment.
So if you have to run power, why not POE? It's SO much easier to run low voltage wire to a remote camera. Simply get a power injector and use cat5.

As for software, I use Blue Iris. I don't work for this company, but this stuff is fantastic! So powerful and configurable. Especially the notifications. Can set hot spots (like a door) to trigger and mask cold spots (like trees). It can email/text you when motion is detected. Pre-record a few seconds before motion was detected. View from inside/outside your firewall (will need to port forward). One of the best $50 I've spent.

Re: What is best (better) wireless webcam

Posted: Wed 22 Apr 2020 2:54 pm
by bob_hatcher
I have the Foscam FI9805P and for six years it's been flawless. BUT, now, all of a sudden the infrared lights don't come on at night about every other night. The solution is to upgrade the firmware which is an incredibly complex task as there are EIGHT updates since I installed it and you have to do them one at a time. The first one I tried failed and didn't give me an explanation. I'm replacing it with something else. Otherwise, it's a fantastic unit and has been bulletproof.